The debt ceiling like in the US existing in pretty much all nations including Australia. However it is a technical concept which has only come to peoples attention thanks to the Tea Party using it as a blackmail tool in order weaken a president over having the national interest.
Regardless having a set figure as a debt ceiling means very little. More important is % debt in terms of a countries revenue and a multitude of other ratios. Using any of these ratios we can easily see that our debt is by far more managable that say the US.
Debt itself isnt evil nor are the large figures i.e. billions and trillions which make people think instinctively that its unsustainable. The evil is a result of debt per se but rather what that debt is used for is evil. If its invested and increases the economic pie I couldnt care less if debt was doubled becaue the resulting economic growth will more than compensate and pay for said debt.
So the problem in the US for instance is not the debt. Its the fact they have costly wars, a tanking economy, inefficient use of resources and a pre-occupation on all things other than their core problems.
It just boggles the mind that they dont slash military funding given soon they wont have a country to protect let alone the economy to fund it.
Also bad economic management is not a single political party owned trait. The republicans for instance and Bush in particular were the love of John Howards life. Each time he was there or within Bushs' precence Howard grew ten feet tall however as economic managers surely you must agree that the vast majority of todays woes are thanks to them and not Obama or the democrats.
Being very apolitical myself I find it strange how people link say Labor with the democrats in the US as big spenders given the republicans wasted so much money it literally is historically astonashing given were they were since the last economic managers ie clinton\democrats.
Was a stimulus in Australia required during the GFC? Regardless of your view or mine most economic analysts would agree that it was. Was it as intelligently implemented or spent as wisely as it could have been? Not by a long shot. Was it spent on investments returning a less than desirable increase in GDP ofcourse. But inefficiency is government and bridges\roads\trains couldnt have started quickly enough to act as a stimulus.
We now attack the NBN as another money waster. I see things differently from most. I for instance see the money waster to have been howard for selling Telstra off before splitting the infrastructure from the retail. Doing this would have fostered competition in the market place and allowed for market based solutions to have been spawned and perhaps rendering the need for a publicly funded NBN style offerining obsolete. Thanks to this not being done we are now in the situation we find ourselves were a monopoly sees no need without government intervention to upgrade its networks at all.
So when we lambast one side for mismanagement it is very easy to find reason to blame the other for the very same issue.
I still maintain a view that government wont improve until the system of government changes. Right now the system is broken.
Portfolios are held by anyone, how could this have occured. How can it be possible ministries are run by people who potentially have literally absolutely no experience, training or accreditation in their respective fields?
Perhaps it can be argued ministers are good "managers" i.e. just as good CEOs in theory can run any business regardless of experience within that industry.
But the problem is CEOs can make decisions based on data given to them free from obstruction. Politicians have onstruction from opposition and their ability to sway rightly or wrongly public perception. Such obstructions can in turn lead to the right course of action determined by a commitee of economists to instead adopt a policy half baked jibberish from Swans own imagination.
So when you ask when we are going to get rid of the green run labor mob I in turn ask you do you really genuinly think that ABBOTT and HOCKEY would be replacements you would be proud of for this nation?
Seriously?
Hi all,
With all this talk in the last week or so about the US debt ceiling needing to be raised to stay afloat, I thought to myself - do we have one of those ??
Haven't checked the Hansard to confirm, but attended a meeting where I heard an interesting talk tonight from a senior Federal politician. As background, it was noted that when they handed the country's purse strings to Labor in Dec 2007, there was 22B in the kitty and no Govt debt whatsoever.....the basis on which Labor sailed through the GFC.
She went on to say that traditionally Australia has informally used a debt ceiling of 75B....although Keating surpassed that by plunging Australia into 96B in debt before he got thrown out.
Apparently, on the night of the Budget speech, after everyone buggered off and all of the cameras were turned off, Bill Shorten quietly went back into the chamber and introduced further legislation to increase Australia's debt ceiling from 75B up to 250B.....can someone check if this is true or not ??
The debt is currently back at 107B and heading northwards rapidly. We are therefore in a far worse position today than when Howard went in to mop up the damage from Keating.
How long are Australians going to have to put up with this incompetent Green led Labor Govt who are addicted to spending ??
