Did Newt Gingrich just endorse Ron Paul?
New video by Liberty Australia:
Videos from Australian Mises Seminar
Please click here for more videos.
Important: November 17 deadline Mises Seminar
We have just been informed that the venue has imposed a deadline to buy tickets to the historic Mises Seminar in Sydney. Tickets must be purchased by November 17. So you have about 2 weeks left to make up your mind: will you join us or will you stay home?
Lessons from the Workers Party
If you haven’t listened to my interview with Mark Tier, who was involved with Australia’s first libertarian political party, then click here.
Audit the RBA
The rise of the vast administrative apparatus of state has resulted in numerous unelected agencies wielding power over the lives of ordinary citizens. There is no pretence that these organisations are independent from the executive branch: they exist to carry out the will of elected representatives, albeit with an eye to the “public interest”.
Central banks are a different story altogether. They are considered ‘independent from politics’. Although not quite as independent as national constitutional courts, they sit apart from ordinary government bureaucracies. The Treasurer, no matter how much he may disagree, is bound either by law or practice not to interfere with the monetary policy decisions of the bank.
This has insulated them from accountability. Parliament does not control the Reserve Bank’s budget, as it does for the independent court system. Full disclosures of monetary policy dealings domestically and internationally are not accessible. The RBA’s exemption from Freedom of Information laws prevents the public from finding out the extent of its relationships with external actors. Like the Fed, no parliamentary committee truly oversees every aspect of its decision-making, meaning it is probably more secretive than the Australian Security Intelligence Service.
Comprehensive audits can reveal useful information about how a central bank is employing its discretionary powers. These audits have been said to impinge on independence, but many fail to consider the protections can be put in place to minimise this risk. Not all documents discovered during an audit need to be made public. Some can be viewed privately by the inspector-general in charge of accountability. Appropriate safeguards, such as time lags between the time of a monetary policy decision and an audit of the decision, can be put in place.
Politicians already have many ways to interfere in monetary policy – using the bully pulpit of parliamentary committees is one of them – and it is unlikely that expanding the scope of audits would significantly affect central bank independence.
Interview with Peter Whelan of the LDP
My interview with Peter Whelan, President of the Liberal Democratic Party.
Meet Peter at the Mises Seminar (mises.org.au). Next podcast features Michael Conaghan and I rebutting the arguments of pro-war “libertarians”.
-
Recent Comments
Catallaxy Files- Read and weep statists February 4, 2012More government spending will not bring back the days when supposedly triple-A-rated mortgage securities could be fashioned out of dodgy loans to unqualified borrowers. Arnold KlingSinclair Davidson
- Farewell Chris Huhne February 4, 2012Chris Huhne, the UK climate change and energy minister who did more than any other minister to bankrupt his country by pursuing the folly of wind power, has resigned. Huhne is a wealthy member of the elite who did not practice what he preached. In other words, Huhne is a hypocrite.Samuel J
- Julia Gillard’s policy to prop up inefficient firms will be counterproductive February 3, 2012In The Australian today (subscription required): “According to Julia Gillard, things are difficult for Australian manufacturing as the resource boom threatens “to hollow out other sections of the economy”.Henry Ergas
- Read and weep statists February 4, 2012
- inCISe
- Hardly fair to vulnerable children February 3, 2012For the last three years, I have been arguing that Australia’s failing child protection system is being run in the interests of social service providers and not ‘at risk’ children. In the name of ‘family preservation,’ state community service departments are leaving children for far too long with highly dysfunctional families and only remove them as a last r […]Jeremy Sammut
- RIP democracy says Brendan O’Neill February 3, 2012They say Athens was the birthplace of modern democracy. Well now it is the graveyard of democracy. In the name of saving the euro, Brussels bigwigs have proposed a system of external interference into Greece’s economic affairs and national sovereignty that is so far-reaching it would make Victorian colonialists beam with pride. The EU dream that libera […]Brendan ONeil
- Constitution folly February 2, 2012Australia is once again revisiting the core problems of the failed Indigenous policies championed by the Labor Party. The expert panel for constitutional reform to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the Constitution gave their recommendations to the federal government on 19 January. The Gillard government has pledged to hold a constit […]Editor
- Hardly fair to vulnerable children February 3, 2012
- IPA news
- Who'll drag us free of our heavy debt burden? February 2, 2012While most Australians were tanning themselves at the beach during their summer breaks, the federal opposition and the...
- Renewable energy rules lose traction January 31, 2012Energy policy in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries is spurred by concerns that gas...
- Danger of new thickets of gas regulation January 30, 2012Peter Roberts' "Globalised gas pricing has local costs" (Talking Point, January 30) applauds the commonwealth's National...
- Who'll drag us free of our heavy debt burden? February 2, 2012
