Posts tagged…Transparency
No need, no gain, no glory
Thu, Aug 26 2010Only nine years late, we are to have a Parliamentary debate about our involvement in the Afghan conflict! What has bought our leaders to consider, at last, owning up to their duty to explain their policies which have so far killed almost twenty Australians? They felt no such need during the election, so it can only be the confounding election results that have bought about this attack of…
Read more…Global Trade Alert
Fri, Jul 03 2009
Just before the London G-20 Meeting in April, Andy Stoler and I wrote a paper for a booklet published by the Center for Economic Policy Research in which we suggested that the best way to make G-20 governments live up to their promises was to expose their misdeeds on trade policy—including those that nominally complied with their WTO obligation—using a public website.
Specifically, we recommended…
Budget transparency turns murky
Thu, May 28 2009So much for the Government's "Operation Sunshine" that was supposed to make budget program expenditure more transparent and accountable.
On the biggest single program item, Defense—a staggering 2.3% of GDP or $27 billion dollars next year alone—it seems to be a case of re-negging and obscurity.
"As the first budget after a new Defence White Paper, there is a glaring absence of substantive…
More transparency in the Federal budget
Fri, May 08 2009The budget to be introduced next Tuesday will be the first to fully implement the recommendations of the (former Senator Andrew) Murray Review on cutting gobbledygook and sloppiness out of budget estimates and on enforcing more rigorous reporting and audit of government use of our money.
All of this is a good thing. It is being managed by Lindsay Tanner's Ministry of Finance. But the program…
Empty words won’t limit the ‘wriggle room’
Tue, Mar 24 2009Democracy ensures we get the governments we deserve.
Gideon Rachman seems to think we deserve only to be consoled for the political dilemma of G20 leaders rather than offered real solutions to the frailties of the global trade framework. He agrees the problem is the threat of 'wiggle room' protection:
"[I]f the world’s political leaders start deliberately increasing barriers to trade, they will…
Can the G20 halt ‘murky’ protectionism?
Sun, Mar 08 2009
What should the G20 do, when they meet in London next month, to put an end to the growing use of what I've been calling 'wiggle-room' protection? Is 'murky' protectionism causing the coming collapse in trade volumes? Or will protectionism rise as a result? Supposing that they wanted to, could the G20 really crack-down on actions that close markets or discriminate against imports but are not…
Transparency as stimulus
Thu, Feb 19 2009
This is a great idea that the Rudd government should adopt.
"…The ‘American Recovery and Reinvestment Act,’ better known as our national Hail Mary stimulus bill, … also contains a measure promoting a less-noted type of economic infrastructure: government data. In the name of transparency, all the Fed’s stimulus-spending data will be posted at a new government site, Recovery.gov"Extract from Why don’t they say what they mean? Sun, Feb 15 2009
It's often open to question whether the G7—represented by their Finance Ministers in this case—mean what they say when it comes to trade policies. But it's a real puzzle that, despite the general skepticism of which they must be aware, they continue to think that they can get away with this by never saying what they mean.
"An open system of global trade and investment is indispensable for global…A G-20 protection standstill
Wed, Feb 04 2009
When they meet in April in London, the Group of Twenty largest economies will face evidence of a big fall in global production, tumbling world trade volumes and rising unemployment around the world. No-doubt they will be asked to make a more solid pledge on protectionism than they adopted when they last met in Washington last November.
"We underscore the critical importance of rejecting…A modest proposal for the ‘G-20’ summit
Sun, Nov 09 2008
The IMF's Managing Director should not try to talk down expectations for next weekend's summit. We deserve much more from these leaders that, so far, have done little to match their promises of reform of global governance over the past decade.
The G-20's role should be to set up the best conditions for a recovery in real markets, not just in financial markets. But, on their past behavior, it is…
