Barrie Cassidy wins outright with this impressive effort.
Swan should be judged, at least in part, as the only Labor treasurer never to have taken the country into recession.
It is early days but I think he might take out the Spin of the Decade Award too.
LOL
Token
7 Dec 12 at 10:48 am
That’s like giving Honey Boo Boo kudos for being the only one of the girls in that family not to have fallen prgnant out of wedlock …
(… yet, anyway)
sdog
7 Dec 12 at 10:59 am
“Swanny Boo Boo.”
sdog
7 Dec 12 at 11:00 am
What an achievement!
tgs
7 Dec 12 at 11:01 am
Amazing. In other words, he’s the only Labor treasurer to never have cocked up – so far (BTW, it sells John Kerin and Ralph Willis short!)
It must because Swan’s a genius. But give him time, Barrie, give him time.
Ant
7 Dec 12 at 11:02 am
Swan is the only Labor Treasurer and deputy prime minister never considered for the top job.
C.L.
7 Dec 12 at 11:04 am
Did the bottom line say: “Barry Cassidy – Media Office, Treasurer’s Office.”
Lysander Spooner
7 Dec 12 at 11:06 am
Gillard: ‘No no. I still absolutely promise a surplus.’
C.L.
7 Dec 12 at 11:11 am
In a perverse way this is right – buuuut,,,,with his spending and borrowing, he’ settting the stage for the recession that is looming over the horizon, given that recessions tend to follow the business cycle of ~7 years. Of course from the Austrian POV the previous government also did its bit in the Keynesian lunacy. Lunacy? Yup, it’w when you repeat a policy in the expectation it might generate a different outcome.
Louis Hissink
7 Dec 12 at 11:12 am
Technically, Keating didn’t take the country into recession, it was already there under Howard’s watch by the time he became Treasurer. The “recession we had to have” in 1991 was under Dawkins.
m0nty
7 Dec 12 at 11:15 am
LOL.
C.L.
7 Dec 12 at 11:18 am
Has Cassidy been exhibiting any other symptoms? Eg, muttering in corners, howling at the moon, wearing his cloths backwards?
Steve at the Pub
7 Dec 12 at 11:23 am
Old leatherface must have callouses on his knees by now.
Howard got mugged by Fraser’s cluelessness and Keating got mugged by reality.
1990/1991 never happened.
It was all part of our imagination.
The Wall fell, but the USSR still exists as a democratic Federation.
.
7 Dec 12 at 11:25 am
“… Several factors contributed to the success of Keating’s [Treasurer 1983 - 1991] second challenge in December 1991. Over the remainder of 1991, the economy showed no signs of recovery from the recession …” (Wiki).
manalive
7 Dec 12 at 11:27 am
Hey what about Chifley?
Lysander Spooner
7 Dec 12 at 11:28 am
The ABC better arrange bulk shipments of adult diapers for all on-air staff for 2013. It’s going to be a heavy year. They’ll need them on both ends.
Keith
7 Dec 12 at 11:52 am
The key point is Cassidy’s admission that all the other labor treasurers caused their recessions. Though obviously he’s a dope for forgetting some. Monty, Keating was treasurer in and caused the 90/91 recession.
We’d all agree that Swan has not done it yet, but I think he’s working up to it and will only be foiled by the proximity of the next election.
Pedro
7 Dec 12 at 12:04 pm
He wins the least ugliest beauty competition.
Harold
7 Dec 12 at 12:21 pm
It’s not for want of trying.
I am the Walrus koo koo k'choo
7 Dec 12 at 12:28 pm
Yep Ol’ Leathery is right. $250bn in federal debt will do that for you. Mr Goosesteen, about the 2012-13 surplus and forward estimates, how long will it take to pay that off?
Ol’ Leathery is raising media fellatio to a new level. Take note Mark Riley, Jabba, Mrs Magoo and Bonge, the bar has been raised.
H B Bear
7 Dec 12 at 12:46 pm
Oh, so teetering on the brink doesn’t count in the lexicon of the cheerleader extraordinaire from the closeted ABC halls of infamy?
Jazza
7 Dec 12 at 12:55 pm
Swan, like his colleagues, is hopelessly out of his depth.
He can parrot the line that the stimulus measures kept Australia out of recession as many times as he likes, and the ABC will gladly oblige him, but it won’t change the fact that the mining industry kept Australia out of recession.
And in uncertain times a prudent treasurer would be aware speculative – that means risk-taking, Wayne – ventures should be encouraged.
But not Swan or Gillard. Just as the miners’ biggest customer China takes its foot off the pedal they’re hit with a new tax.
So new ventures are increasingly being closed or put on hold. And none of the new tax has been collected.
This isn’t rocket science – it’s learned at primary school. Something about killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
And Another Thing
7 Dec 12 at 1:06 pm
After being on the receiving end of much deserved criticism over the systemic bias in his television program Barrie Cassidy has well and truly jumped the shark with this latest stream of conscious agitprop.
Displaying the worst excesses of undergraduate partisan hyperbole, Cassidy leaps in to defend the indefensible.
Nailing one’s colours to the mast so definitively should come as no surprise to those who have watched Insiders devolve into a sewing circle of felllow travellers but this missive, once and for all, puts to rest any perception of the political neutrality of its host.
No doubt a fat stipend in a government-sponsored sheltered workshop ala Mischa Schubert awaits Mr Cassidy as he enters the third trimester of his media career.
Major Elvis Newton
7 Dec 12 at 1:18 pm
There – I’ve said something positive about the goose, now where’s my bauble?
Rabz
7 Dec 12 at 1:36 pm
I love this:
““The impact of missing the surplus by the promised deadline is considered to be a political downside rather than an economic downside, provided the miss is not so significant that it shakes the medium-term strategy,” they said.” http://afr.com/p/national/labor_prepares_to_ditch_the_budget_0faluRAHRJcGf375qLtrYL
You mean there’s a medium-term strategy?
Pedro
7 Dec 12 at 1:53 pm
Yes. It is colloquially known as ‘Fuck Abbott over’.
That is, load him up with motherhood style commitments so he has to break some to do anything…
Skuter
7 Dec 12 at 2:03 pm
That’s why he ought to take a libertarian approach.
A $100 tax cut is better than a $50 handout.
.
7 Dec 12 at 2:06 pm
Did Cassidy deliver those pearls of wisdom in sign language?
I imagine that his head must have been jammed so far up his own fundament at the time he uttered them, that his words would have been awfully muffled.
If Cassidy has so much faith in the allegedly superior arithmetical abilities of Wayne Swan, I wonder if he would demonstrate that faith by allowing Swan to complete his (Cassidy’s) tax return?
Up The Workers!
7 Dec 12 at 2:09 pm
The RBA must think Swanny has just about done it – they keep cutting rates frantically.
Bill
7 Dec 12 at 2:47 pm
Not what you would call the strongest recommendation for laybore control of the nation’s finances.
Biota
7 Dec 12 at 3:09 pm
Wasn’t it that $900 cash splash that put a blip in the retail sector for one month, which prevented what was called at the time, a “technical” recession?
You know, that stimulus we’re still paying off.
Is that what we’re celebrating as a Labor achievement?
Chistery
7 Dec 12 at 4:11 pm
We’d be a lot better off in the long run if there had been a recession already.
The longer you put these things off, the more drastic they are.
DriftForge
7 Dec 12 at 4:37 pm
Cue sdfc with his hysterical private debt equal to 160% as a proportion of GDP deal.
Who cares?
Let’s say Government spending is 25% of GDP.
10 million plus workers and the net result is an aggregate loan:income ratio less than 4.5:1.
This is conservative as the LVR or loan:income ratio on a prime rated secured residential mortgage loan with the major banks, whom are quite conservative.
The threat to banks is from a loss of employment, not minor losses in overtime or hours worked.
I’d expect a banker to get this, but Keynesianism can be debilitating.
.
7 Dec 12 at 4:43 pm
It’s a real shame Cassidy is a shadow of his former self, like a punch drunk prize fighter he has lost his dignity and is pitiful to watch.
Honesty
7 Dec 12 at 4:49 pm
Wayne Swan should be judged, at least in part, on the fact he has never punched a baby.
ar
7 Dec 12 at 6:24 pm
I think Leatherface has figured out that Swan calculates the budget on his body abacus and he always out by at least 2.
Tintarella di Luna
7 Dec 12 at 8:56 pm
HAHAHAHAHAHA! Don’t give up the day job, though, Barrie (err, sorry, maybe you should, so you can experience the real world of economic hardship).
The problem with a lot of rules of thumb is that they are good only for a hitch-hikers ride – short distance, destination unknown, company uncertain.
Are we old enough to recall Frank Ifield “I’ve been everywhere!”?
John A
7 Dec 12 at 10:35 pm
“We’d be a lot better off in the long run if there had been a recession already.
The longer you put these things off, the more drastic they are.”
You betcha. Before systematic government intervention, recessions were routine but short. Do we really want decades of recessions rolled into one, dragged out painfully for years? Many believe if to be the mother of all recessions when the SHTF. QE infinity will have us all fucked eventually.
The Beer Whisperer
7 Dec 12 at 10:55 pm
Dot
Cue sdfc with his hysterical private debt equal to 160% as a proportion of GDP deal.
When falling income means you are no longer able to service that debt it can cause a few financial problems.
sdfc
7 Dec 12 at 11:59 pm
And like most of the media claque, don’t mention the debt unless you do so in softening terms like “it’s relatively low in percentage of GDP terms compared to … Well, several EU countries.”
Under no circumstances mention how many years it would take of an annual 10 billion surplus to pay it off and meet the the accumulating interest burden.
Blogstrop
8 Dec 12 at 7:15 am
For those who are interested, here is a link to Australia’s Treasurers
Do you think the Labor Party’s Cassidy had given any thought to Chris Watson (1904), Andrew Fisher (1908-1909, 1910 -1913, 1914- 1915) or William Higgs(1915-1916) when he made his ridiculous claim? Or does he think that the Labor Party only started with Whitlam?
johno
8 Dec 12 at 7:59 am
Aha we serviced it with both falling real incomes and then falling real and nominal incomes.
Eddie Groves lost his portfolio, schmucks kept their houses, and the RBA accommodated banking (which doesn’t require inflation). The shit banks got bought out.
So no, sdfc.
.
8 Dec 12 at 9:47 am
You know, the stimulus where consumer spending barely increased once it people’s pockets. Judith Sloan writes a very good piece on the fiscal stimulus a couple of weeks ago.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/governments-fiscal-stimulus-a-dud/story-fnbkvnk7-1226505621262
Andrew
8 Dec 12 at 10:24 am
” this week the final accounts were released for last financial year showing another deficit of $43.7 billion.
Yet the government members were congratulating themselves when Swan and Finance Minister Penny Wong announced that the latest figure wasn’t quite as bad as the $44.4 billion predicted just five months ago”
Well Done Penny and Goose!
They will save another $40 Million this year as they withdrew funding for some chemotherapy treatment centres!
Winnedge
8 Dec 12 at 11:30 am
Winning indeed.
Numbers has also used Judith’s grandchild to point out how awesome public hospitals are and how private sector specialists are evil for taking holidays.
He also pointed out using a child’s birth to make a political point was low rent.
I wonder if Swan and Wong thought if they sacked 1/10 of the DECC they could save money and up chemotherapy subsidies?
.
8 Dec 12 at 11:33 am
Wayne Swan is so knowledgeable about international finance and economics, he still believes that the “G.F.C.” is a famous fried chicken store run by a geriatric little bloke with a white suit, hair and beard.
“Finger lickin’ Good!”
Up The Workers!
8 Dec 12 at 1:18 pm