The nature of Prime Ministers

The nature of Prime Ministers. The quote of the weekend just has to be former Foreign Minister Alexander Downer talking about Kevin Rudd:

“I’ve known every prime minister of Australia since I was born, and I have to say Rudd is one of a kind.

“They’re all vain, and all quite selfish people, but I’ve never come across anybody so self-obsessed, so absolutely focused on self-advancement. He would say anything or do anything to advance his own interests.”

From a lengthy article in the Sydney Sunday Telegraph that explores the many character foibles of the deposed Labor Prime Minister. I wonder what John Howard thinks about this description of all Prime Ministers past and present?

A cartoon to put television political reporting in context. At the risk of offending Laurie et al:

From the excellent xkcd wedbsite

And on the subject of cartoons. Is this the best climate change cartoon ever?

An oddball candidate. I’m sure that in the list of candidates for the Australian election of 21 August there are some pretty odd ball people but I wonder if any can compare with former Marine, Basil Marceaux who is running dead last in a four-way race for Tennessee’s GOP gubernatorial nomination.

Yahoo News reports that last week, as they have done with the other candidates, a Chattanooga TV station gave Marceaux a few minutes on air to pitch his campaign platform, which includes planting grass on vacant lots to “sell it for gas” and a plan “to stop traffic stops.” He may or may not have been drunk.

Judge for yourself:

The Yahoo report commented:

“Marceaux is running at just 1 percent in the polls, according to the Chattanooga Times Free Press. But he’s getting way more attention than his rivals, including Reps. Zach Wamp, who has suggested that Tennessee should secede from the union, and Ron Ramsey, who has questioned whether Islam is really a religion. Come to think of it, maybe Marceaux isn’t that weird after all.”

Niall Ferguson as ‘poseur’: the case for the prosecution from Though Cowards Flinch. Another interesting piece about the skills of Niall Ferguson as an interpreter of economic history, this time from the Though Cowards Flinch website. It puts the debate between Paul Krugman and Ferguson into this context: If the Ferguson camp can make him into the leading public figure economist on both sides of the Atlantic, conservative fiscal policy will win the battle of economic policy, and the future will be grim for millions. It’s that serious.

The whole article titled Niall Ferguson as ‘poseur’: the case for the prosecution is worth the read. This particular extract follows nicely from my earlier post on the flexibility of the Ferguson views:

In the Los Angeles Times in October 2005, Ferguson stated:

‘Parties out of power usually tell themselves that sooner or later the incumbent will be tripped up by the economy. That was indeed the pattern throughout the 20th century. Yet this is to overlook four things.

First, economic volatility has declined markedly since the 1970s. In all the G7 industrialized countries, annual growth rates vary much less than they used to. So do inflation rates. Recessions are happening less often, and when they do, they are not too steep and not too protracted’ (my emphasis).

But here is what you said in Vanity Fair in January 2009 (yes, Vanity Fair), in an interview to publicise his new book, and in which he refer to a period very shortly after the appearance of Los Angeles Times article:

‘Well, I can say with a degree of self-satisfaction that it wasn’t luck. Two and a half years ago I decided to write this book, because I was sure that this financial crisis was going to happen, and the reason I was sure was because people kept coming up to me—whether it was investment bankers or hedge fund managers—telling me that volatility was dead that there would never be another recession. I just thought, ‘These people have completely disconnected from reality, and financial history is going to come back and bite them in the ass’ (my emphasis).

Like bollox he thought the financial crisis was going to happen! And that’s exactly why the book he refers to, ‘The Ascent of Money’, reads like one book praising to the heights the growth of financial innovation that led us to the mess we’re in, sandwiched between two hurriedly scribbled chapters telling us the story of what we already know.