I don’t normally promulgate articles I disagree with, but I thought this was a more or less perfect exposition of the social democratic line on the global economic disaster. The Democratic party in the US hardly identifies as social-democratic, but much of the world is governed by social-democratic parties, and so it is instructive, and worth thinking about how their line runs. In particular, how it systematically closes down discussion of systemic, structural crisis — it is up to the social democrats to rescue capitalism from itself, as the author here says explicitly:
It’s also interesting, because the author is the current Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd.
http://www.themonthly.com.au/tm/?q=node/1421
Anyway, it may be worth dissecting the social democratic line, so worth a look for those who are interested. A bit at the end is totally Australian partisan politics, with the expected misreading of history.