Grim tidings

Kevin Herbert writes: Re. “Rundle: with the silly season over, recession is coming” (yesterday). Just after the 2008 GFC, the then-US Congressman Ron Paul likened (I paraphrase) the US Fed’s quantitative easing strategy to living in a very cold climate and progressively cutting down your home for firewood. It was always going to end badly.

Why aren’t we surprised that those Wall St merchant banks who own the US Fed have done very well out of their QE strategy, siphoning off more than US$1 trillion of the $19 trillion they’ve created out of thin air. And to think that not one of these Wall St banksters has faced criminal charges for their key role in causing the 2008 GFC … not one!

Oxfam’s announcement today that 62 people have as much wealth as the bottom 50% of all mankind shows just how much power this criminal elite has over the rest of us? Of course you can’t mention these facts in the MSM because the very same criminals have put up some substantial barriers to open discussion ever since they took over the US Fed in 1913. Check out what Ron Paul has to say about them on his website.

On tax reform

John Richardson writes: Re. “Turnbull is screwed either way on tax reform” (yesterday). Ben Oquist deftly attempts to put the slipper into Malcolm Turnbull by arguing — on the one hand — that genuine tax reform is not only achievable but imperative for Australia’s future, while — on the other — claiming that Turnbull has already recused himself from the challenge

While Ben’s thesis may be sound, if not a tad premature, he fails to acknowledge the bigger truth that none of our current crop of politicians is the slightest bit interested in pursuing genuine tax reform, given the inevitable consequence that it would upset too many of their stakeholders.

The real reason that Malcolm Turnbull will fail the test when it comes to genuine reform — tax or any other — is simply because politicians and politics in this country have no more substance than the advertorials that masquerade as morning news programs.

Sadly, it will not be Malcolm Turnbull who will be “screwed” by this chronic failure of leadership, as Ben so succinctly puts it, but rather our country and ordinary taxpayers who have no other choice than to pay for the daily burlesque that passes for government.