Floating away and Bubbles

Abbott's youthful ( conservative ) paper upon the errors of floating the dollar in hindsight is notable. Our dollar has traded from 56c to 1.13 since, devastating many an industry amidst such instability. The floating dollar does raise serious issues.

The biggest of which is that every player is in it for themselves. And big financiers do mighty well out of such variable floating currencies, pushing one way then the other, making waves then plundering the instabilities.

Our high dollar has now wiped out much of our agriculture and agricultural processing, our manufacturing, ford holden .

It has risen from excess capital in US markets via low interest rates, pushing commodity prices into bubble zones. Profits for wallstreet bankers, disasters for the farmers and industrialists on the other side of the deals.

Then our dollar follows - bubble zones, till many industries are unsustainable.

We could have kept our dollar down with the right intentions and practises.

Right intentions? Selfish accumulation or seeking balance and common good?

Printing of money weakens currencies and incites inflation. For the latter reason it has largely been tabooed.

But where one considers and works with Steiner's solution - gift money - inflation need not take hold. Concievably printing money could have moderated our overblown currency, saving many of the industries lost over the last 5 to 7 years. Inflation would have gone through the roof is the argument against but had we significantly gifted support to needful countries, making lifelong friends, building global stability,mutual interest and respect, inflation imaginably needn't have emerged, let alone devastated.

Even now, were the government to use such gift impulses, in the form of vehicles, cars and parts for East Timor (bug free), New Guinea, Malaysia, India,Vietnam, Maldives, Africa......contracted into the future we could stabilise our industries. Similarly for bottled fruit, or for canned vegetables, for milk or for cheeses.

We have vast Intellectual advances and could also offer much as aid to Afghanistan or Iraq, medicine, agriculture, infrastructure.

The quest for sound government, for harmonious relations, is to look beyond the three year electoral cycle to the five, ten, fifteen and thirty year cycles, aiming not for corporate profits, but for commonwealth, for balancing, for global stability.

We need citizens with similar understanding if we want democracy to realise such developments.