Thursday 26th of December 2024
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we're rooned .....

we're rooned .....

from Crikey On November 1 last year, The SMH carried a front page interview with Peter Costello in which the Treasurer said the commodities boom was over.  

Fast forward 12 months and he’s at it again, predicting a “huge tsunami” will engulf financial markets, the US economy is going down, China will weaken, Australia will fall into recession, the earth with split asunder and issue forth plagues of toads and serpents, foul wraiths and dark vapours. And boils, don’t forget boils. Australians will always suffer more boils under a Labor government than under a Coalition government.  

And that’s why the Reserve Bank shouldn’t lift interest rates. Or something like that.Which leads to the challenge of picking the odd one out: Warren Buffett, Hu Jintao, Don Argus, Peter Costello.  

According to Buffett, the subprime wash-up will hurt for up to two years, but the US economy overall will move forward. (The Sage of Omaha is in South Korea inspecting the local subsidiary of the Israeli industrial tools company he bought last year – just another little bit of globalisation.)  

According to Argus, commodity demand and prices are staying high despite US weakness. The chairman told the BHP AGM in London overnight that Chinese growth is continuing and India is following it, 10 or 15 years behind.  

According to Hu, well, according to the Chinese government, September quarter growth printed at an annualised rate of 11.5 per cent, down a fraction from the June quarter, but the same as the annualised rate for the first nine months of the year. China’s about to overtake Germany as the world’s third biggest economy.  

And Prophet Pete Costello is predicting extreme difficulty ahead which will turn into Armageddon if Labor wins the election and he’s not given the chance to be prime minister.  

The line of the day goes to Macquarie Bank international economist Mark Tierney: “Perhaps the new Copernican revolution is the discovery that the world economy does not orbit the US.”  

Someone should tell Pete.

Sign, urgently...

Yes John,

In my previous article (I pompously decided to call these words articles rather than blogs since my words make more sense than those of the PM, although he's got more power through the fate of his crafted hubris and associations with cardboard and paper barons) "green tango in Paris", the "tsunami" predicted by our Pete, should the Chinese do float their currency, will look like a wavelet on windless Sunday afternoon.

First because the Yuan will still have floaties and second it will be kept on a leash to make sure it does not sink or fly away.

...

But the fact is that Russia will put tariffs on some of its export especially wheat [and timber] (between 10 and 20 per cent) and the French are threatening to hammer countries non-signatory to the Kyoto Protocol and demanding the EU partners to join in this. (the French President also want to stop commercial GM crops...)

These things will add woes to countries like Australia's whose trade deficit will balloon as "the mining boom is over" should we believe the second master of hubris. Not quite. There is another 20 to 30 years of mining to do, including pumping oil, then there will be hell to pay. Costello is using this as a scare tactic to spook dark-feathered voters. Meanwhile, the barrow boys know there is now only broccoli left to sell (Costello knows that too). Meaning that whomever is inheriting the election result will have to do incredible feat to keep the Australian economy on steady feet after years of luckily coasting along. And the only one to to do this will be Rudd and his team. If you are a worker, true to the word "work" — not one of those who fiddle with the money market and produce nothing but cash in your own pocket (as most transactions fees do not care whether the result is positive or negative) and grief in investors' dreams — the Howard/Costello team will make you pay even more for their past eleven years' complacency and will hammer you more, the decent working person...

Kick Howard out. Rudd to sigh Kyoto to limit the breakage.