All Australian's where are we headed plz neone assist in discussion

I am starting this thread as a plea for information from my fellow ATS members. In Australia right now the information we are receiving in regards to the financial collapse is one sided and refusing to adhere a global view of the situation. They continue to flaunt the benfits of Paul Keating's 'Four Pillar' policy and how it has saved us from the crisis. I am asking for your views on not only Australia position in the economic crisis but also whether the four pillar policy is the diamond shield its being portrayed as.

Below are links to a 3 part video from former prime minister Paul Keating on his views on the economic crisis and he makes mention of the four pillar policy.

www.youtube.com...
www.youtube.com...
www.youtube.com...

Also included interesting article on the incompetence of Geithner and how he effectively destroyed the Asian market's and, inadvertently, played a significant role in the emergence of this economic crisis.

When Barack Obama announced his champion to rescue the world from economic ruin, it was the first time most Americans had ever heard the name Tim Geithner. The initial impression was good. The stockmarket surged and the pundits swooned. "Exactly a decade ago, he was Uncle Sam's golden-boy emissary sent into the stormy centre of what was then the world's worst financial crisis [the Asian crisis]," reported The New York Post. The paper gushed: "Just 36 at the time, he'd been raised in Asia and knew the culture so intimately he scored successes and won confidences that other diplomats couldn't match. Geithner earned widespread plaudits for pulling together quarrelling Asian finance ministers into a $US200 billion rescue of their economies." "A fantastic choice," said a Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi analyst, Chris Rupkey, as the Dow rose by nearly 6 per cent. Even one of Obama's political rivals, the hard-bitten Republican senator Richard Shelby, agreed Geithner was "up to the challenge". If anyone in the US media had thought to ask a former Australian prime minister for his assessment, they would have heard a different view. And they would not have been so surprised at Geithner's performance since. In a speech to a closed gathering at the Lowy Institute in Sydney on Thursday, Paul Keating gave a starkly different account of Geithner's record in handling the Asian crisis: "Tim Geithner was the Treasury line officer who wrote the IMF [International Monetary Fund] program for Indonesia in 1997-98, which was to apply current account solutions to a capital account crisis." In other words, Geithner fundamentally misdiagnosed the problem. And his misdiagnosis led to a dreadfully wrong prescription. Geithner thought Asia's problem was the same as the ones that had shattered Latin America in the 1980s and Mexico in 1994, a classic current account crisis. In this kind of crisis, the central cause is that the government has run impossibly big debts. Continued...

sorry about the shotty link to the article ... im still new at posting lol....


neways here is a direct link to the article instead

www.smh.com.au...

reply to post by kavaman


good topic. It's very true that we in australia are getting a watered down version of what is really happening out there. Just this morning, a back bencher was on news radio (i forget the guy's name) talking about the carbon trade emission scheme - when asked about the current crises, he openly declared that the current government is not telling the public about the true situation and rather playing up the positives in order to boost confidence in the market.

I have been harping on since the second quarter of 2007 that NSW is in recession. But everyone just kept pointing to the GDP growth of australia... essentially, ignoring the fact that nsw was contracting and the mining boom in wa & nt was keeping us afloat. now the country is officially in recession but no one is going to admit it till the numbers come in.

if you listen to rudd, you will notice that always says that we are shielded from the world crises but in the same breath, he always presents a doom and gloom scenario about how we have to take steps in order to avoid the worst. people are saying that he is fear mongering, but something tells me that the doom and gloom situations he describes are closer to the reality than the other stuff that they say and paint a rosy picture.

it seems that the gov approach so far is working though. i have been talking to people at random and the joe blog down the street seems to be of the opinion that things will pick up by the end of the year. this is exactly what we mean by consumer and business cofidence. IMO they are all in for a rude shock shortly - take the building approval rate for instance... building approval rates have gone down nationwide - i think something like an avge of 6% - NSW leads the downturn and has a decline of 17%. although there are a lot of projects being completed and keeping people employed and keeping the cash flowing through - when this lot of projects is completed, there will be no work in the building industry. its bad enough already but when the project timelines come into play thats when the stuff will really fly to the fan.

the other thing you must remember is that statistics can be munipulated but they dont lie. in the sept quarter they told us that unemployment will max out at 7% but being in recruitment, i know that was a whole lot of baloney - we are probably going to look at 13%. and just late last week they announced that the 7% figure will need to be revised upwards...

now that's the real story. so just between you and I, keep your ears out for the doom and gloom situations that rudd describes.

I agree with what your saying. I feel that Australia is simply attempting to portray our nation as seperate from the rest of this. However with the rate of globalisation this is simply untrue. Another thing is regarding the four pillar policy they're flaunting as our saviour. It basically restricts mergers between the four big banks of Aus (Westpac, ANZ, Colonial, Maquarie), this then results in less competition between banks and less need to take risky ventures. Now whilst this is true the problem im seeing is that Keating seems to provide a contradiction in his argument. He outlines what many of us now believe, that this crisis is systemic and cannot be fixed through stimulation or reformation. However he then explains how the four pillar policy (that he instituted) would help shield us from the crisis. Problem is this govt just put through the 50 billion stimulus aswell as the fact that there is evidence that the four pillar policy allows banks to make their foreign derivative obligation off balance (hidden) and these obligations come in at around 14.2 trillion. So that on top of the recently added 50 billion should put us in a relatively #ed up state down the line lol

oh and heres the evidence about those derivative obligations....what you reckon?

www.scoop.co.nz...

If you want to blame anyone, blame Howard and Costello.

They recklessly pushed our economy skyward for over a decade. Having a steady cycle of ups and downs helps stabilize an economy and keep it at a steady level of growth.

When you force it as high as the previous government did, it has to eventually fall the same distance, if not further.

It peaked about the 2007/2008 financial year, and now poor Rudd has inherited the plummet.

No, I'm not absolving him of all the blame. His economic policy is adequate at best, destructive at worst.

I'm sure Howard and Costello knew all too well (Costello, despite looking like a creepy old man that would love to offer kids candy is quite intelligent) what the result would be of their economic policy. They also knew too well that Australia was getting sick of them after their long term in office and figured that the next government would be Labor.

How better to assure the Liberals get in next election than to leave the Labor government what appeared to be the perfect economy? Under the surface it was about to crack and head straight for depression, but the average person didn't know that.

What can we do about it?

In my opinion, nothing.

We will go a lot further south yet before we start to climb back up.

Just hope that when we do return to a somewhat normal cycle, the treasurer in power puts the country's needs ahead of their own political ambitions.

[edit on 8-3-2009 by fooffstarr]

good point, although just so im not misinterpreted im the farthest thing from a liberal supporter i was simply pointing out the contradictive perspective being enforced by Rudd. However in saying that i don't leave much blame with rudd because fact is this is far bigger than any one nation, especially one with only 18 million people, and he's doing what he can. However its becoming clear the entire world is stuck between a veritable rock and a hard place and, like was mentioned earlier, Rudd's address's are beginning to show this. Even though he's spouting the accepted rhetoric he seems to be exuding an aire of hopelessness and i just don't know where we're heading.