mozgrame
Engorged member
I'm not a member of the CEC, so this is not in their defence. Purely from a point of balance. I know how much you demand fairness, equality and a voice for all..lol!
1. Tinker with the banking system = Implement Glass-Steagal Banking Seperation.
What is “Glass-Steagall”?
The 1933 Glass-Steagall Act was a leash on Wall Street for 66 years. It established a firewall to protect the financial functions of banking that were necessary to the daily lives of the American people, from the speculators on Wall Street. Specifically, under Glass-Steagall, commercial banks which held deposits protected by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)—the savings accounts, chequing accounts, and business trading accounts—were forbidden from owning, or being owned by, Wall Street investment banks. It didn’t stop speculation, but it severely curtailed it, because it denied Wall Street investment banks any access to the enormous deposit base of the American people. It was when Glass-Steagall was repealed in 1999, that Wall Street finally got access to the commercial banks and their deposits, and all forms of speculation expanded exponentially.
Australia has never had the Glass-Steagall standard applied to our banking system. The Commonwealth Bank when it was government-owned provided a check on the power of the private banks, but since the Hawke-Keating "reforms" of 1983, our nation's banking system has been deregulated and opened up to foreign banks. Simply re-establishing a government-owned national credit bank will not be sufficient. Australia needs the Glass-Steagall standard. All commercial banks must completely divest themselves of all non-commercial banking activity and banking units. No cross-management or cross-ownership with investment banking units may remain. Commercial banks alone will be protected by governments; every other entity is on its own. As the funny money is left to vaporise only what is real remains, and no matter how bad that looks, we can deal with it. We will enact the Commonwealth National Credit Bank Bill 2013.
2. Tinker with the banking system = Enact the CEC’s Commonwealth National Credit Bank Bill
Following the application of the Glass-Steagall standard to our banking system, we will enact a new government bank.
Remember the Commonwealth Bank, before the Hawke/Keating ALP sold it? It was the “people’s bank”, which served the people, and was owned by the people. The centrepiece of the urgently-required reorganisation of the financial system will be the establishment of a new people’s bank, a Commonwealth Bank-style, government-owned national bank.
Whereas Glass-Steagall is an emergency protectionist measure, to erect a firewall between the imploding financial system and the people, so they keep their savings, the CEC’s Commonwealth National Credit Bank Bill will facilitate the next step, which is the reconstruction of the economy, and the creation of a new financial system, in a way that furthers the common good of the people.
The policy of banking for the common good was the vision of the “old” Labor Party of King O’Malley, Frank Anstey, Jack Lang and John Curtin, which was initially realised through the 1911 establishment of the Commonwealth Bank. In its first years of operation during WWI, under the governorship of Sir Dennison Miller, the Commonwealth Bank: forced the private banks, through competition, to lower their fees; then it “saved” those same banks by averting a “run” on the private banking system; financed many important war-related measures, including the national wool clip; and financed the first great national infrastructure project, the east-west Indian-Pacific Railway.
Sadly, with the untimely death of Governor Miller in 1920, private financial interests directed Tory Prime Minister Stanley Melbourne Bruce to hand over control of the bank to private bankers, and strip it of essential powers, so that it never functioned as effectively again. Save for the brief period of WWII, when John Curtin and Ben Chifley empowered the Commonwealth Bank to regulate and direct the entire national banking system for the war effort, the function of the Commonwealth Bank was systematically eroded over the decades. It lost its reserve banking powers in 1959, which put its central banking function under private control, and was eventually reduced to a simple, government-owned savings bank, before it was privatised in three tranches between 1989 and 1996. However, even as a simple savings bank, its role was essential: it guaranteed every depositor’s savings (which guarantee was lost once it was privatised) and it kept the private banks’ fees low, by forcing them to compete. Once it was privatised in 1996, the big four banks went on a profit spree by hiking fees and slashing staff and branches, and gouging over $80 billion in profits in ten years!
Now, in this period of banking collapse and economic depression, it is time for a new national bank with all the powers to regulate and direct the national economy. The Commonwealth National Credit Bank will issue the long-term credit governments need to finance the urgently-needed new water, transport and power infrastructure necessary to get Australia’s productive industries functioning again. That credit will be at very low rates of interest, of 2-3%, and over long terms of 25-40 years, and this way, the government can do away with private, toll-funded infrastructure, and public-private partnerships (PPPs). The credit issued by the CNCB, utilised in this way, will filter through to the entire economy, and create over a million high-skilled, high-wage, productive jobs, directly and indirectly.
3. Develop a Moon/Mars project = Australia's Blueprint for Economic Development
Isherwood: Australia needs a space program
The 40th anniversary of the moon landing is a reminder of how far backwards the world has gone under the monetarist policies of globalisation, and a lesson that genuine economic prosperity requires exploration, scientific discovery, and new technologies, declared Citizens Electoral Council leader Craig Isherwood today.
“For that reason, Australia, which under globalisation has collapsed from an industrial powerhouse to little more than a colonial quarry, needs its own space program,” he said.
The Australian economy in the 1950s and 1960s was able to play a key role in early space exploration, including being just the fourth nation to launch its own satellite from its own soil, at Woomera in South Australia in November 1967.
However, it was immediately following that high-point, that Australia’s protectionist industrial policies championed by the great Country Party leader John McEwen, under which Australia had developed world-beating industrial and scientific capacity, were systematically dismantled by British imperial free trade policies, and most of the cutting-edge areas of Australian industrial development, including the space program, nuclear power program, and machine tool production, began to be slashed.
“And look where it got us,” Mr Isherwood said, “$1.2 trillion in foreign debt, collapsed manufacturing, collapsed agriculture, and a quarry economy that depends on China for its survival.
“If Australians want a real economic recovery, don’t look for it in a rise in the stock market, or in housing prices to even more unaffordable levels—look for it in a resurgence in world-class scientific and industrial capacity, which developing our own space program will catalyse.
“We have all of the ingredients for a successful space program: We have brilliant sites for space bases on Christmas Island and Cape York Peninsula, because of their proximity to the equator.
“And we have hardy souls in our scientific community, including our own home-grown astronauts Andy Thomas and Paul Scully-Power, and cutting edge rocket scientists in our universities, who have toiled away with minimal support to develop new space technologies, but who could achieve spectacular results if they were charged to lead a national effort.”
Mr Isherwood concluded, “A space program isn’t a cost, but an investment, which will mobilise our engineering, manufacturing, construction and scientific capabilities, and generate spin-offs for the economy that create jobs and raise our living standard.”
For background on an Australian space program, click here.
1. Tinker with the banking system = Implement Glass-Steagal Banking Seperation.
What is “Glass-Steagall”?
The 1933 Glass-Steagall Act was a leash on Wall Street for 66 years. It established a firewall to protect the financial functions of banking that were necessary to the daily lives of the American people, from the speculators on Wall Street. Specifically, under Glass-Steagall, commercial banks which held deposits protected by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)—the savings accounts, chequing accounts, and business trading accounts—were forbidden from owning, or being owned by, Wall Street investment banks. It didn’t stop speculation, but it severely curtailed it, because it denied Wall Street investment banks any access to the enormous deposit base of the American people. It was when Glass-Steagall was repealed in 1999, that Wall Street finally got access to the commercial banks and their deposits, and all forms of speculation expanded exponentially.
Australia has never had the Glass-Steagall standard applied to our banking system. The Commonwealth Bank when it was government-owned provided a check on the power of the private banks, but since the Hawke-Keating "reforms" of 1983, our nation's banking system has been deregulated and opened up to foreign banks. Simply re-establishing a government-owned national credit bank will not be sufficient. Australia needs the Glass-Steagall standard. All commercial banks must completely divest themselves of all non-commercial banking activity and banking units. No cross-management or cross-ownership with investment banking units may remain. Commercial banks alone will be protected by governments; every other entity is on its own. As the funny money is left to vaporise only what is real remains, and no matter how bad that looks, we can deal with it. We will enact the Commonwealth National Credit Bank Bill 2013.
2. Tinker with the banking system = Enact the CEC’s Commonwealth National Credit Bank Bill
Following the application of the Glass-Steagall standard to our banking system, we will enact a new government bank.
Remember the Commonwealth Bank, before the Hawke/Keating ALP sold it? It was the “people’s bank”, which served the people, and was owned by the people. The centrepiece of the urgently-required reorganisation of the financial system will be the establishment of a new people’s bank, a Commonwealth Bank-style, government-owned national bank.
Whereas Glass-Steagall is an emergency protectionist measure, to erect a firewall between the imploding financial system and the people, so they keep their savings, the CEC’s Commonwealth National Credit Bank Bill will facilitate the next step, which is the reconstruction of the economy, and the creation of a new financial system, in a way that furthers the common good of the people.
The policy of banking for the common good was the vision of the “old” Labor Party of King O’Malley, Frank Anstey, Jack Lang and John Curtin, which was initially realised through the 1911 establishment of the Commonwealth Bank. In its first years of operation during WWI, under the governorship of Sir Dennison Miller, the Commonwealth Bank: forced the private banks, through competition, to lower their fees; then it “saved” those same banks by averting a “run” on the private banking system; financed many important war-related measures, including the national wool clip; and financed the first great national infrastructure project, the east-west Indian-Pacific Railway.
Sadly, with the untimely death of Governor Miller in 1920, private financial interests directed Tory Prime Minister Stanley Melbourne Bruce to hand over control of the bank to private bankers, and strip it of essential powers, so that it never functioned as effectively again. Save for the brief period of WWII, when John Curtin and Ben Chifley empowered the Commonwealth Bank to regulate and direct the entire national banking system for the war effort, the function of the Commonwealth Bank was systematically eroded over the decades. It lost its reserve banking powers in 1959, which put its central banking function under private control, and was eventually reduced to a simple, government-owned savings bank, before it was privatised in three tranches between 1989 and 1996. However, even as a simple savings bank, its role was essential: it guaranteed every depositor’s savings (which guarantee was lost once it was privatised) and it kept the private banks’ fees low, by forcing them to compete. Once it was privatised in 1996, the big four banks went on a profit spree by hiking fees and slashing staff and branches, and gouging over $80 billion in profits in ten years!
Now, in this period of banking collapse and economic depression, it is time for a new national bank with all the powers to regulate and direct the national economy. The Commonwealth National Credit Bank will issue the long-term credit governments need to finance the urgently-needed new water, transport and power infrastructure necessary to get Australia’s productive industries functioning again. That credit will be at very low rates of interest, of 2-3%, and over long terms of 25-40 years, and this way, the government can do away with private, toll-funded infrastructure, and public-private partnerships (PPPs). The credit issued by the CNCB, utilised in this way, will filter through to the entire economy, and create over a million high-skilled, high-wage, productive jobs, directly and indirectly.
3. Develop a Moon/Mars project = Australia's Blueprint for Economic Development
Isherwood: Australia needs a space program
The 40th anniversary of the moon landing is a reminder of how far backwards the world has gone under the monetarist policies of globalisation, and a lesson that genuine economic prosperity requires exploration, scientific discovery, and new technologies, declared Citizens Electoral Council leader Craig Isherwood today.
“For that reason, Australia, which under globalisation has collapsed from an industrial powerhouse to little more than a colonial quarry, needs its own space program,” he said.
The Australian economy in the 1950s and 1960s was able to play a key role in early space exploration, including being just the fourth nation to launch its own satellite from its own soil, at Woomera in South Australia in November 1967.
However, it was immediately following that high-point, that Australia’s protectionist industrial policies championed by the great Country Party leader John McEwen, under which Australia had developed world-beating industrial and scientific capacity, were systematically dismantled by British imperial free trade policies, and most of the cutting-edge areas of Australian industrial development, including the space program, nuclear power program, and machine tool production, began to be slashed.
“And look where it got us,” Mr Isherwood said, “$1.2 trillion in foreign debt, collapsed manufacturing, collapsed agriculture, and a quarry economy that depends on China for its survival.
“If Australians want a real economic recovery, don’t look for it in a rise in the stock market, or in housing prices to even more unaffordable levels—look for it in a resurgence in world-class scientific and industrial capacity, which developing our own space program will catalyse.
“We have all of the ingredients for a successful space program: We have brilliant sites for space bases on Christmas Island and Cape York Peninsula, because of their proximity to the equator.
“And we have hardy souls in our scientific community, including our own home-grown astronauts Andy Thomas and Paul Scully-Power, and cutting edge rocket scientists in our universities, who have toiled away with minimal support to develop new space technologies, but who could achieve spectacular results if they were charged to lead a national effort.”
Mr Isherwood concluded, “A space program isn’t a cost, but an investment, which will mobilise our engineering, manufacturing, construction and scientific capabilities, and generate spin-offs for the economy that create jobs and raise our living standard.”
For background on an Australian space program, click here.
