You can almost give Joe Hockey and co a pass for their continued efforts to paint our growing, low-unemployment, low-inflation, low-debt economy as a disaster zone because BS-ing about such things is kind of their job.
Gemma Daley in the Australian Financial Review
Australia must get its budget into surplus by 2014 to help avoid revision of its AAA credit rating, warns the global director of pubic finance at Standard & Poor’s Financial Services.
London-based Kyran Curry, a long-time primary credit analyst for Australia, also warned of similarities between Australia’s relatively indebted banking system and Spain’s position before its rapid decline.
He’s changed his tune from back in June.
Hmm, what’s changed in the meantime…
So yeah, S&P’s AAA ratings, not all that important really.
Ignore the credit rating.
Insolvencies are at alarmingly high levels.
Growing – been revised down. Only mining boom sees us in positive territory.
Unemployment – these stats are the doggiest of the lot. Real unemployment should include those who have given up looking for work.
Inflation – Heading up.
Low debt – well compared to bankrupt countries, yeah, we’re low. But compared to where we should be, both private and public debt, is crazy high.
Our level of govt debt is impacting on funding sources for our banks.
but m0nty is a happy little vegemite.
Tim Dunlop – The Dumb’s go to poet for economic commentary.
Bring back Our Jessica.
“our growing, low-unemployment, low-inflation, low-debt economy as a disaster zone because BS-ing about such things is kind of their job.”
I wonder what Tim Dunlop said in 2007?? Before that election unemployment was at 4.3% and trending down and you have to go back to the 1970′s to find unemployment with a number 4 in front of it. Federal govt debt was zero, in fact it was less than zero.
But Dunlop urged everybody to vote Labor in 2007. Apparently the big danger according to Swan was the inflation genie that Costello let out of the bottle.
The participation rate was also higher. Well spotted Neil.
Dim Tunlop – as an economic and political analyst he makes a fabulous pot plant.
“Ignore the credit rating.
Insolvencies are at alarmingly high levels.
.
15 Nov 12 at 10:11 am”
I couldn’t help but notice that almost all upstairs tenants of a shopping centre in North Sydney have disappeared in just 18 months, including most recently a large corporate long-term tenant. Now it’s mostly just the food court downstairs, and now I can get a seat any time i want. Seriously, an entire floor of a shopping centre empty. Retail is in recession, no doubt at all.
You mean there’s still a reader somewhere who will bother reading Tim Dunlop?
Blow me down, I thought he’d karked it so to speak when he closed his leftist rant called Blogocracy!
Wonders will never cease but I note that the leopard hasn’t changed his spots, still seeing red and one -eyed!
“I wonder what Tim Dunlop said in 2007?? Before that election unemployment was at 4.3% and trending down and you have to go back to the 1970′s to find unemployment with a number 4 in front of it.”
Exactly. In 2007 Labor and their hacks in the media argued that the strong economy was entirely due to the boom in commodity prices and the government deserved no credit. Yet now, apparently, Australia’s stronger economic performance compared to most developed economies is largely due to the current government’s stellar economic management and not simply the result of good fortune and demand for our resources. Good one. Is anyone buying that?
I have seen reference to our unemployment rate, but I know of businesses where they have agreed to reduce hours to be able to keep everyone working. There are, I suspect, also cases where new people are being brought in with lighter schedules.
Is there any record of the number of hours worked, as opposed to how many people worked?
Aqualung, the ABS now publishes aggregate monthly hours worked as part of their labour force survey…
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/6202.0Oct%202012?OpenDocument See table 19 or 20
A September statement by Kyran:
One could be excused for thinking that Kyran has recently decided, for whatever reason, to engage in a bit of hyperbole.
Thanks, Skuter.
@Beer Whisperer. Brisbane is the same.
Suburban and especially CBD shopping centres have vanished storefronts and “under renovation” barricades all over the place. Broadway on the Mall has a floor like that as well.
I drove to family on the weekend and counted 14 For Sale signs along a residential 3km stretch of road.