from Alan Ramsey …… 

The Rudd Government this week "dealt" with the gravest "global financial crisis" since the Great Depression of the 1930s by ignoring Parliament. 

The Prime Minister and his Treasurer instead announced a $10.4 billion bucket of sectional handouts to voters at a midday press conference on Tuesday rather than in a ministerial statement to the House of Representatives when it met two hours later. By doing so it avoided giving Malcolm Turnbull and the Opposition a right of reply. 

That night Kevin Rudd went on national TV, in a prerecorded, unchallenged "address to the nation", to tell Australians they were going through "the worst financial crisis in our lifetime". At lunchtime Wednesday Rudd delivered an hour-long political performance, again on national television, this time to the National Press Club. Parliament adjourned at 5pm on Thursday. 

By then your 226 federal MPs had met for four days without Rudd once making a detailed speech, in the House, on the "worst financial crisis in our lifetime". Nor did he initiate a full parliamentary debate on the "crisis". Parliament resumes on Monday. Before then, however, on Sunday night, Rudd will go on the Seven television network to answer questions by viewers in the so-called An Audience With The Prime Minister. 

What, you might ask, is the Government running from? 

If you think that harsh, understand that the Government is not spending $10.4 billion in what it likes to call its Economic Security Strategy. What Rudd and Swan are doing is giving specific voter groups great gobs of money totalling $10.2 billion and insisting they spend it. Yet the "worst financial crisis in our lifetime" is the result of uncontrolled debt. Why shouldn't people use the money to pay off debts? 

Good heavens, no. Didn't you see the Herald's front-page banner headline on Wednesday? "Spend till we mend", it screamed. The Government wants pensioners ($4.8 billion) and low- and middle-income families ($3.9 billion) to spend the $8.7 billion it is giving them, and to be thankful into the bargain for the handout. Just don't save. 

It's what the economists call the "paradox of thrift". The profligacy of the world's banking system, with those billions of absurd loans which have now collapsed the system because they can't be repaid, have got us into the mess. Ordinary citizens everywhere are now supposed to fund the government bail-outs with their taxes as well as ignore their own household debt while they spend further billions in handouts to "stimulate economic activity". 

Extreme Times Coming To A TV Near You