The NLP is responsible for gross economic mismanagement

[Tannin]

You were wrong. Grow up and deal with it.

[stui magpie]

[pietillidie]

Far be it from me to become the biggest hypocrite in human history and actually steer a topic back on course ( ), but let's get back to the misery Abbott and friends have inflicted on the Australian economy through a complete lack of planning and risk management. Clearly, he got the George W. Bush Yale MBA by way of Oxford and now has the results to prove it!

[pietillidie]

Employment growth revised down:

http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/jobs-growth-revised-down/story-e6frfkur-1227519279752

[Culprit]

No doubt someone will complain Leigh Sales was biased in her interview with Big Ears last night.

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2015/s4309488.htm

Abbott is any idiot and when exposed. Read below.

LEIGH SALES: Let's quickly run through some other issues, Prime Minister, starting with the economy. When Labor left office, unemployment was 5.8 per cent; it's now 6.3 per cent. Growth was 2.5 per cent; it's now two per cent. The Australian dollar was 92 cents; it's now around 70 cents. The budget deficit was $30 billion when you took office and now it's $48 billion. How do you explain to the Australian people that you were elected promising, in your words, to fix the budget emergency, yet in fact, Australia's economic position has worsened under your leadership?

TONY ABBOTT: Well I don't accept that. The boats have stopped. The carbon tax has ...

LEIGH SALES: We're talking about the economy.

TONY ABBOTT: The boats have stopped, the carbon tax has gone, the mining tax has gone. We are now on a path to sustainable surplus and we've got three free trade agreements finalised. If only the Labor Party and the CMFEU weren't trying to sabotage the Free Trade Agreement with China. And we've got ...




The gift that keeps on giving.

[pietillidie]

^Perhaps he was referring to the boat loads of minerals to China which have suddenly stopped

[Mugwump]

[pietillidie]

^You're kidding me. You talk about over-investment cycles as if discussing the mysteries of the deep. Calling a predictable commodity cycle and currency valuation shift a "world trade flow" is something I would expect to hear that pariah Alan Greenspan say in defense of his role in the GFC, or John Howard say in defense of his grossly negligent Iraq War failure, as if surprised or dumbfounded.

Cycles are not things which "cruel" anyone, except the deluded who keep pretending "this time will be magically different", which of course the greedy and over-invested do, denying their error to the last in a state of religious zeal.

The country needed to strengthen and broaden revenue streams, and counter-cyclical revenue streams in particular, through smart initiatives and supporting PR campaigns. How much has the nation spent on cementing its education system as the future of Asian education? Where is the supporting science and technology infrastructure? What has the country done to lift its flagging high-end tourism facilities? Why hasn't the wine and high-end food industry made more ground? How welcoming and user-friendly is Australia as an expensive destination vis-a-vis alternative expensive destinations?

These idiots have left the infrastructures of those revenue streams rot, grabbing the money off overseas students to fund tax cuts, even as they cut national contributions to the same services. There's barely a program in sight to improve tourism infrastructure; there's negative PR all over the place in regard to Australia's openness to Asian guests (true or not); very little is being done to make sure education infrastructure is meeting demand *at quality*, from teaching quality and lecturer supply, to student services assistance, even as overseas students are blamed in popular racist discourse for "lowering standards". The Internet is a freaking disgrace, which is a massive deterrent to students and visitors; the country is plagued by shocking environmental protection measures and PR associated therewith, including reckless custodianship of the Great Barrier reef FFS; there is no effort in sight to synchronise tech, digital media, film and venture business; the country has shockingly expensive public transport, and completely rubbish public transport in cities like Sydney. Housing affordability is every bit the menace for visitors as it is locals.

Punishing the working classes by providing them rubbish infrastructure, as Abbott and Hockey have done in opposition and power, has the double whammy effect of punishing other national revenue streams. And that externality never makes it into the budget, even if it's a massive black hole.

Meanwhile, there is every aid, handout, scheme, negotiation, delegation, PR campaign and photo op for mining and fossil fuels imaginable - even as it enters a downturn!

The answer is, put as much effort into other revenue streams as you put into mining and fossil fuels, you Neanderthal morons.

[Mugwump]

^ it's an interesting litany of national shortcomings, real and perceived ; but there is little that a government of two years duration could have done to alter the implications of the collapse in the terms of trade for Australia's major products. That collapse was very predictable, yes, but short of betting the national economy on a hedge fund, "risk management" or "mitigation" are barely conceivable, given the time frame and the conditions.

What will mitigate the downturn in the terms of trade is the currency, and it's doing its traditional job as a shock absorber farly well. It will boost most of the industries that you refer to, and stimulate their further development more than anything the government does.

In truth, Costello was in the driving seat when the road was chosen, and Swan followed their sat nav. Blaming Abbott for a slowdown in growth now, or a recession if it comes, only makes sense if you're a bloke with a hammer making everything a nail.

In reality, up to this point, the Australian economy has not crashed as hard as I expected it to. Growth of 2% would make most Western economies breathe easy, just now. I think it'll probably get worse, before it gets better.

There are lots of things to attack th Abbott government over, but the quarterly economic numbers have a parentage that goes way back.

[Tannin]

[HAL]

Is there anything else?

[pietillidie]

And those same useless fanatics killed off every counter-cyclical measure and effort to focus on other revenue streams, including the foundational mining tax. Of course they're central to the blame. As I say, if they put the same effort into other revenue streams as mining and fossil fuels, the nation would be far better positioned, regardless of how good or bad others across the world are doing.

[Mugwump]

[Tannin]

It's not a dictatorship, Mugwamp. The PM and the Treasurer don't get to decide everything. They are merely first among equals in the Cabinet and in the Party Room. The many, many Howard-era types still in the government today must bear a significant share of the blame which attaches to the Howard Government's failure to manage the economy with even basic competence.

But how significant is this failure? Is it fair to blame the government (any government) for the economy?

Yes and no. Governments generally don't do much that's good for economies (there are examples but they are rare exceptions); they can and do, however, do bad things. They can't generally help very much, but they certainly can do enormous harm - and that is exactly what Howard did. He utterly failed to manage the one-in-a-century opportunity of the mining boom, and he utterly failed to manage its terrible consequences - in particular the gross over-valuation of the $AU which crippled industries all over the country and for which we wil be paying for decades to come. (Rudd failed to correct that error, we should note.)

Secondly, he failed to use the huge short-term windfall income generated by the boom to do anything useful: he pissed it up against the wall of middle class welfare and tax cuts for the wealthy.

The result is that we now have a dysfunctional economy with bugger all manufacturing, with tourism and education still a long way away from recovery, with truly massive private debt (private debt in Australia is not far off the worst in the whole developed world), and with no productive assets worth mentioning with which to back that debt. Three quarters of the mining enterprises, for example, are now foreign owned. The same applies to what's left of manufacturing and agribusiness: you battle to buy a loaf of bread or a can of beans except from a foreign company. The one great asset class remaining in the hands of private individuals is real estate, and that is grossly over-valued and very, very vulnerable to correction. ("Correction" in this case is a term equivalent to "massive crash". Bricks and mortar make good investments generally, but not when the price you pay for them is inflated by a factor of three, not when the money you bought them with is borrowed, and especially not when your other prime investment is super and your super fund depends very largely on the continuing profitability of the big four banks who are the very same ones most dangerously exposed to a real estate crash. Note also that all this over-investment in real estate is non-productive. You can't eat it, you can't wear it, you can't make anything with it, and unless you can find a bigger fool with even more borrowed money, you can't even sell it.

[pietillidie]

What complete and utter nonsense, Mugwump. Are you just taking that view because "the Lefties" are annoying you again, or do you actually know nothing at all about the Aussie political economy?

Those idiots put pay to the mining tax in opposition; they put pay to a serious NBN; they put pay to a carbon trade scheme in opposition; they trample alternative energy at every opportunity; they've done nothing for the export industires of tourism and education except de-fund the latter and soil the former with environmental mismanagement and backward infrastructure.

As far as the Australian economy goes, given the structural reforms Hake and Keating alone implemented long ago now, 2% and tightening is a complete failure when infrastructure neglect, budget shredding, rising unemployment and persistent wage decline is factored in.

You're allowing them to keep living of commodities even as their mismanagement becomes evident, as if feverishly working in their PR room.

A complete failure in an economy with very little left to reform except to smooth out the commodity cycle by strengthening other sectors, which in turn will help unemployment and wages. A succession of weak ALP governments wanted to do that, but the mining thugs backing the Glibs spent millions campaigning against it in opposition using fear and ignorance.

Or did you expect Hawke and Keating to beat inflation and the commodity cycle at the same time for Howard and Costello, and now these useless pricks?