“AUSTRALIA’S most needlessly wasteful spending took place under the John Howard-led Coalition government rather than under the Whitlam, Rudd or Gillard Labor governments, an international study has found.

The International Monetary Fund examined 200 years of government financial records across 55 leading economies.”

The current debt spike eventually ended the life of a reclusive elderly adult film enthusiast and… well… umm… shit.

I was being a bit flippant, there will be a down side when the Bondholders work out they have been stiffed.

That’s cool. You gave me a lead in.

The squandering of the resources of those countries by autocrats, by purchasing the debt which will never be paid, is just another way the statists/autocrats rob their people.

Don’t you mean the average person in those countries who have the excess wealth drawn from their labour / mineral wealth squandered buying debt instead of allowing the people to invest in projects with real ROI?

Um Token, I guess I might do, and it does seem a bit unwise for those ‘people’ to buy US bonds instead of investing in something real. Its not clear to me why anybody would invest in Government Bonds, US or Euro, when they clearly have no intention of repaying you with units of equal value.

I was being a bit flippant, there will be a down side when the Bondholders work out they have been stiffed.

But borrowers could just say ‘caveat emptor’?

(Clearly, I am no economics expert, but I have read a lot of history, and investors have lost their shirts investing in govt bonds, many times before. But not English speaking countries, as far as I am aware).

There is no so such thing as compulsory voting. Only compulsory attendance at the polling station to have your name ticked off on a list.

That’s not quite correct. IIRC the law states you must also obtain a ballot, fill it in and place ballot in the booth. But it’s not really enforcable.

The losers are the bondholders, Rich Arabs and Poor Chinese – a few westerners with savings, they mostly dont vote in US elections, and never vote Democrat anyway.

Don’t you mean the average person in those countries who have the excess wealth drawn from their labour / mineral wealth squandered buying debt instead of allowing the people to invest in projects with real ROI?

They print dollars and pay their debts with inflationary money.

The losers are the bondholders, Rich Arabs and Poor Chinese – a few westerners with savings, they mostly dont vote in US elections, and never vote Democrat anyway.

The evil capitalist system sows the seeds of its own destruction, and socialist superman will have to bail them out, again. You can tell why it does not bother Obama at all.

So that would mean Bush snr and Clinton ran some surplusses, while Reagan and GWB were running mild deficits at 4-6% of GDP. Seems surprising, particularly in Reagan’s case.

There was much to like about Reagan (and Thatcher), but reducing government expenditure is not one of them.

Clinton’s fiscal management needs to be more widely acknowledged.