Geoffrey Blainey: Great Turning Points in Australia's History

Professor Geoffrey Blainey, a prominent Australian historian, academic, philanthropist and commentator, speaking at the Freedom to Choose Conference 2014, held at the University of Notre Dame in Fremantle, Western Australia.

Prof. Blainey examines great turning points in Australia's history and some underlying causes including Australian federalism, labour regulation, and politics.

[paulmccarthy]

Geoffrey Blainey, Australia's greatest historian.

[JCResDoc]

53:15 war serves a fn, and until that is acknowledged we wont find an alternative set

[Rob-fxdw]

For competent economists like there are today and have been for quite some years (the last 60 years or so) it would have been not so hard to predict the inflation in the 1970's as soon as one became aware the US government was to abandon the Bretton woods gold link with the US Dollar which was and still is the world reserve currency.
The US did it in 1971 and then competent economists would have also known the outcome of the oil price explosion of those 1970's both effects of which were known to beinflationary. The inflation was a predictable result of what then president, Nixon, actually did and said that they would "temporarily suspend" it and thus expand the money supply and the increases led to more increased inflationary pressure added by the middle east oil price increase which put a shock through the system which was not addressed until the Volker Federal Reserve increases in interest rates and relative play down of government debt. It had risen by 300% in the 10 years after 1970.
Being a competent economist with a knowledge of the history of money, debt and government and the relative foolishness of politicians one would have understood that there is nothing so long as temporary measure by government where it favours the government itself the US dollar is still fiat currency much like most currencies.
An example of this 'temporary' statement of Nixon's is the Australian government's 'temporary' primage duty on imports which was put on during the great depression to help fix the depression and raise revenue for government so it was not removed until the mid 1970's since the depression was over by then ( 30 years before of course).