“The high dollar is destroying the Australian economy, it’s in no way a good thing.”

True. I think small exporters don’t have the money hedge currency. May be they could form a co-op, have a pool of fund in USD for their incomes when they sell in USD then wait till the AUD drop and convert to AUD and make a windfall.

They could have a forex expert to tell them when and how far the AUD will drop so they can give discount or low price to their USD customers at certain times and increase sales.

The honest assessment of private debt would identify that it occured under Costello’s watch and not Swans.

Absolutely. Costello’s continuation of the negative gearing rort, the changes to CGT and the first home buyer’s bribe drove Australia into a credit-fuelled real estate bubble that still hasn’t popped (and consequently has locked damn near a generation of young Australians into debt slavery).

However, the current Government has done nothing but encourage the problem with continuations of the same policies. They are equally guilty.

Drsmithy;
The honest assessment of private debt would identify that it occured under Costello’s watch and not Swans.
The current RBA interest rate settings are both lower than any time during the Howard/ Costello period and give monetary policy the flexibility to be adjusted either way to aid in the macro economis drivers. As most economists will agree that the Government fiscal policy alone is not capable to have the necessary impacts to readily affect macro economics in todays economy. We do need to have the added capacity to use monetary policy settings as delivered by the RBA.
The evidence of the acumen and skills of the current governments skills stand in stark contrast to what we have experienced, and to some extent still endure, under Howard and Costello, the people that Abbott, Hockey and Robb wish to emulate.

His absurd one-man-band campaign on the MRRT did irreparable damage to Labor and really annoyed a lot of very powerful vested interests. They will make a determined effort to ensure Labor is demolished over the next decade.

Didn’t have to be this way … could have been done strategically and bringing something approaching a public consensus - like Medicare. But no - Kevin wanted to do it all by himself. What Bernard would call the “Rudd agenda”.

Bureaucrats make very poor politicians where you must work with others and compromise. They make excellent foreign ministers where the scripts are written in stone.

Might make the political donations issue somewhat more urgent and speed up the democratisation of the ALP. Painful though.

And that is evidenced by our dollar being over 1.07 […]

The high dollar is destroying the Australian economy, it’s in no way a good thing.

Plus, it’s only high because our Government is the only one in the world idealogical (/dumb) enough not to be actively devaluing their currency. It’s got nothing to do with fundamentals. The bulk of our economy currently boils down to letting foreigners dig up our dirt and sell it to other foreigners, and borrowing money from foreigners to swap - not even build new ! - houses with each other. We don’t make anything. We don’t have any unique services to offer. We don’t even qualify as an attractive tourist destination anymore since the cost has skyrocketed in the last few years.

[…] us having one of the few AAA ratings for Sovereign Debt.

The elephant in the room isn’t sovereign debt, it’s private debt (which is but a banking system bailout away from sovereign debt).

“Yes thats true but the reason why is because our interest rates are much higher than other countries so we are a “safe bet” for dumping a few lazy Billion into the banks.

Australia needs to start cutting interest rates before we start cutting jobs. Lower interest rates will reduce the value of the Aussie dollar, increase export revenues(read: Budget Surplus) and protect Australian jobs.
….
A lower Australian dollar means miners profits increase, meaning they pay more tax, meaning budget surplus.
….
Well minerals are sold in U.S $.

If we sell minerals at $1.08 Aus to $1US then we make much less money than selling minerals at $0.90Aus to $1US
…..
Can you imagine the RBA and government just sitting back and letting the dollar get to say $1.20Aus to $1US? That will be devastating to our local industries”

Look at how absurb his argument was, he hasn’t got a clue about trading. He does not know that the high dollar hurts our exports because it makes it too expensive for other countri,es to buy our goods, he thinks the high dollar reduces the profit hence the ludicrous example that contradicts his own statement.

His premise is the lower the dollar the more profit miners will make yet he does not know that in his example: $1.08 Aus to $1US is lower than $0.90Aus to $1US not higher as he thinks it is, and $1.20Aus to $1US is actually 83.33 US cents for 1 Aus dollar , a fall not not a rise in the dollar so if the RBA let the dollar gets lower to 83 US cents it would be devastating for our local industri,es. We have had the dollar at 83 cents many times, below and above that as well it is not a devastating number but actually would be good for our exporters at the moment. Apart from commoditi,es which are influenced by market price, export compani,es set prices and profits in relation to production cost relative to the Australian dollars, regardless whether you choose to have your contract in AUD or USD the profit will be the same but the exporter should take into account exchange conversion fee back to AUD if they choose USD contract.

I got my mortgage in mid 2008 at 9.25% rate and now I’m paying at 6.8% I should know about rate and he tri,ed to talk over all of us, from the page on the link he gave us it also showed advertisement for low rate such as 6.35% from myrate.com.au or refinance at UBank for about 6.15% but he ignored it and kept saying interest is higher now. He does not know how to read graph to assess the situation from the data. Labor won government at the end of November, they inherited an ACCELERATING HIGH RATE RISING TREND (highlight not shouting), from memory it reached 9% in Dec. 2007 just a few days after the election and reached around 9.25% in 2008. Joe Hockey the other day claimed credit for low unemployment in 2008 yet he did not claim responsibility for the high interest rate in 2008, these Libs select everything good and credit it to themselves.

I don’t know how you, Jimmy and Peter have the patience to talk to him. He just ignores the facts and deni,es it when he is wrong like he suffers some kind of delusion or mental illness.

“Perhaps if we nationalised the mines as Venezuela did, it would no longer be a problem. We could certainly fund Gonski!”

Labor can’t run a $10 chook raffle how will they run a multibillion dollar mining company?

Hi MICHAEL CROOK - Now that IS a good idea! We could take another leaf out of their book and re-write the Constitution. They did a damned fine job. There were regional meetings via community radio/TV etc, then larger ones, then the people voted on the Draft, and then on the Final Document! Amazing! Why can’t we do that? The fuddy duddies (probably misogynists - certainly racists) may have written for those times, but many years have passed by since then. We should just have a Referendum to start again!

Leave it to the Libs in NSW and soon Qld, and there’ll be nothing left! They’ll sell what little is remaining! Depressing! If or when the Coalition is in Govt in Qld, the people will be governed by Clive Palmer and Gina billions! Can’t say they weren’t warned though! Just like what’s happening in NSW.

Incidentally, why isn’t the Media screaming at O’Farrells’s big LIE. He insisted that a Coalition Govt would NOT change NSW policy re Uranium. (they’ll insist that they’ve only given the go ahead for ‘investigations’? Yeah Right! I have fairies at the bottom of my garden too?

We’re getting too much like the US for my liking! Publicly funded Election Campaigns were supposed to stop all this. All it meant is that the cookie jar is full to start with, and anything else is icing on the cake! Don’t like it at all!

It will be interesting to see the result of the High Court action re Unions in NSW over recent Legislation.

The money paid by corporations comes out of their profits and also the pay and conditions of their workers. Given that most investors ion these companies invest through institutions and that workers are not given any part of the decision making individuals are not given any say at all.

“Australia is a lucky country, run by second-rate people,” greed merchants and ecocidal freaks.