G Khan.  This federal election is becoming ever more interesting as time goes by with one opinion averring that Liberal Party advertisements are assuming that Rudd will win in November and that it will be second ALP term that we voters should be frightened of.  This might become true.

What strikes me as even more interesting, Marx, is the Firey’s decision to back the Greens rather than the ALP in some NSW seats.  Apparently the Firey’s think the ALP has lost its way and no longer represents the working class.  This attitude cannot be easily dismissed as it is reasonably clear that the ALP has been hijacked by the chardonnay swilling, chattering classes.  But I am under no illusion that the parliamentary ALP caucus is beholden to the trade unions, despite the change of support from the Fireys. Funny thing Marx, lots of ALP members read your books but it’s actually my mob that understands what you wrote, and given that your lot and the coalition seem to be merging politically, (The Nationals are really agrarian socialists), then I sense a new political landscape developing, one which I am not altogether certain will be something to look forward to.

What I haven’t been reading here, watching the river traffic go by while I supp my local red wine, is the impending disaster awaiting our pension funds.  Seems neither the ALP nor the Coalition has much to say on this topic at the moment but bankruptcy is guaranteed if we don’t do something soon. We could take a look at Chile’s private retirement funds that has been embraced y over 90% of its population or even Romania’s, where millions of workers are being transferred to 14 competing private funds. An American perspective of this necessary trend is here. It seems we might need a good dose of Kevinism to finally wake us up.

But what totally depresses me is Greg Sheridan’s latest comment in the Australian “Howard’s Grand Failure” in which he opines that Howard is unlikely to win this election. And he makes an even more telling comment when he writes that the conservative part of politics has a devastating inability to attract people of quality interested in state politics.  What about federal?

We are living in interesting times Marx and I am not sure things are going to be better since no one in the media has yet cottoned onto the impending problem created by the credit expansion Howard’s mob have engineered. Come to think of it, that would be fun – Rudd gets in and inherits a recession.  Then we have to come back to fix it. I feel better already!

K Marx.  Khan, I simply cannot understand your diatribe about pension funds.  You have perhaps been sipping too much of the local rotgut.  I assume you believe markets will collapse and make everyone poorer, at least on paper.  This is a normal part of the capitalist system you have come to know and love since your days raping and pillaging from your base on the Mongolian steppes.  “Bad luck, I say.  Get over it.”
Excess credit expansion is an inevitable part of the capitalist system.  This was not “engineered” by Howard’s mob, they have no clues about money and finance.  They have put their fate in the hands of that bald Christian bloke – is it Garrett or Stevens? – so they deserve all they cop. 

I do admit that booms are followed by busts, that is part of the great capitalistic dialectic that I analysed so clearly all those years ago.  So Comrade Kevin07 may have a big problem on this hands when he gets elected, as now seems virtually certain.  But he will be able to blame the bust on Howard and Costello, ensuring Kevin07’s survival and also that the Liberal party is forced to have a thorough purge of all those associated with that unlovely duo.

By the time your lot gets in again it will be a completely fresh front bench, following what in my day was described as a purge.