Seems like strangely naive reporting from crikey to be honest. Seems well off the mark, and lacking crikey’s usual contrarian vision.

Cheers Rasta. But if I want Steve’s views I can read the Eeyore bits of my Winnie the Pooh books.

I’ve read those bits in my 4 year old’s current literature, and they don’t sound the same as Steve Keen’s analyses. Can we try to be a bit more adult in our informed and detailed critiques of why an analysis might be perceived to be incorrect?

Ooops, building the physical attributes of our great nation to something more perfectly great is a socialist plot? Yes? If the goverment is the only one still standing to do the job? If the activity is the exercise that will make us healthy?
Shoot the goverment with the right bullet from the right gun with the right hand.
The confused forget Stalin was a fascist not a socialist worse than that other fascist with the name starting with H, not Harvey.

As for people suggesting I’m gilding the lily, I’m amazed at how you’ve all forgotten that over summer there was serious talk of an extended and very deep recession that would cause massive unemployment and a collapse in house prices. A number of other economies, including that of the United States, are still experiencing that sort of crisis. The fact that six months later we are not is something worth celebrating.

And yes John “JJ Jeans, It’s a warehouse” James, one of the reasons is that we entered the downturn with a strong economy and some cash in hand, even if the budget was structurally in deficit. But the main credit goes to the RBA and the Treasury and the politicians who followed the advice of the latter.

My comment although not as eloquent as yours, encapsulates their thinking. But, as long as they have so little talent available to them that they persist with Malcolm the Mad and Joseph the Just-after symptoms of disorder, or the Angry Abbott is proof, set in concrete, of the older ones and Christoper Pyne the Petrified Emu is what ther have in store for the future. God help the Liberals, because few other people would help them.

Please, neither of you come the old ad hominem argument. Because this is exactly what it’s meant to be.

And I don’t think it’s a one-eyed partisan question, to be honest, David1.

There’s not much to be gained from a minute by minute, second by second breathless account of a few macro-economic indicators, given that the Great Depression took several years to develop to 30% unemployment and bread queues from the 1929 Wall St Crash. Every year another prop fell away from the world economies, another set of speculators came unstuck, and more flow-on effects kicked in. Rome wasn’t burnt in a day, you know.

21,000 more people out of work this month, unable to pay mortgages or rent. Wonder how the 20,000 finance workers in Sydney are faring finding new work at present? Plus the returning finance ex-pats from London, of course. Melbourne must be having similar difficulties. Not to mention all the commercial property development that is foundering — construction workers will be out of work soon too. And housing starts are down once more.

Etc, etc. Let’s look at ALL the doom and gloom indicators, not just cherrypick one or two plum statistics on a second by second reportage basis — not really analytical economics journalism, is it, more like the sensationalist colosseum tracking antics we’re used to seeing from second rate ‘political’ reporters in Canberra more interested in personalities and squabbles like spectator sport than the true state of the economy.