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Editorial: Let's see the blueprints

In the movie The Great Rock `n' Roll Swindle the impresario Malcolm McLaren tells of how he made piles of cash from promoting the talent-free punk band The Sex Pistols as music's next big thing. One of the most memorable lines comes from McLaren explaining the way hype works, in which after using various dark arts to create a wave of publicity for the band he adds: "For God's sake, don't let anyone hear them play." The idea, of course, was to overpromote their talent and then make sure nobody got to see the discordant reality.

How interesting to see that the KMT is using exactly the same strategy as that used to sell the artistes responsible for Friggin' in the Rigging to jaded British youth. We have been told by the KMT that only it can save the economy. For this reason the party has demanded the posts of premier and vice premier, as well as the right to provide the heads of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, central bank, Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) and Directorate General of Budget Accounting and Statistics, as the price of its cooperation in a coalition government.

The message in the party's recent campaign ads is that only the KMT can bring the good economic times back. But, and here is pure McLaren, there hasn't been a whisper as to how this is actually to be achieved. Instead there is only the likes of Chiang Pin-kun (江丙坤), reminding us that when he was in charge of the CEPD things were rosy and now he isn't they are dire, ergo the only way to make them rosy again is to put him back where he belongs. This is nostalgia, it is not a way out of Taiwan's problems. If the KMT has a coherent policy which can restore economic growth then everyone should be able to examine the details.

At the very least this attitude suggests a McLaren-esque cynicism towards Taiwan's voters in which empty hype is seen as more important and effective than substance. It also suggests either that the KMT doesn't really have a plan, or perhaps that its plan is not so very different from what the DPP government is trying to do.

Whenever the KMT has felt the economy slipping before -- 1997-8, for example -- its usual solution has been the standard fare of an infrastructure-related stimulus package and lower interest rates. This hardly seems to be the stuff of economic visionaries. The DPP has tried to do the same thing: interest rates are at their lowest for years while a stimulus package has been announced, although it is restricted by the fact that the government has already reached its legal debt ceiling, which precludes more deficit spending.

This paper has said before that there is little the government can do to persuade US consumers to buy more information technology (IT) -- the root cause of the collapse of Taiwan's exports and therefore its economic contraction. So if the KMT has a master plan to turn this around then it should say what it is.

There is no point in the party pointing to its track record, because that record is one of how to manage a generation-long boom -- itself the product of forces outside the government's control. We have never seen any of the KMT's current economic team manage a recession. Why should anyone think they would be less fumbling than the DPP?

What we have seen is the KMT's decision to bet Taiwan's economic growth on the eternal expansion of US IT demand -- the consequences of which we are now suffering, the KMT's cronies loot Taiwan's banks and the party ramp the stock market. More of this? Let's hope not.
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