The budget

[Jovial Monk]

Thanks to Labors' spending we had a .5% fall in GDP, not bad considering the fate of those countries where they didn't spend:

Recession storms have barrelled across Europe as data reveals the extent of the damage to Germany and France, but the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has forecast the world economy will turn the corner by 2010.

Germany registered its worst performance on record when its output was shown to have shrunk 3.8 per cent in the first quarter, while French gross domestic product contracted 1.2 per cent over the same period and Italy fell by 2.4 per cent.

The gloomy news from western Europe was reflected further east, with Romania and Austria becoming the latest countries to officially slide into recession while Hungary and Slovakia also registered sharp falls in output.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009 ... 572306.htm

[Jovial Monk]

Sheepy's new friend, Chris Richardson from Access Economics criticises the Fibs. Will it be the end of a beautiful friendship?

Australia’s budget is its social compact with itself, and we’ve stuffed it up.

Chris Richardson, Access Economics

A leading economist is blaming the Howard government for part of the massive budget deficit which will be unveiled tomorrow.

Chris Richardson, from Access Economics, says the Coalition spent too much during the mining boom.

He's told 2GB’s Ray Hadley the Coalition should have left Labor with a much bigger surplus.

http://livenews.com.au/budget-09/we-stu ... /11/206023

[Jovial Monk]

UTurnbull lives up to his name:

http://www.theage.com.au/national/turnb ... ml?page=-1

THE Coalition is likely to drop its opposition to the Government's controversial $1.3 billion alcopops tax increase, refusing to make it a double dissolution election "trigger".

Passing the rise would also remove the criticism that Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull is inconsistent in advocating higher cigarette tax while the Coalition votes against the alcopops rise.

Mr Turnbull urged in Thursday's budget reply a 3 cents per cigarette tax rise to raise the funds that would be lost from the Coalition opposing the means test on private health insurance.

The Opposition and Family First senator Steve Fielding voted down the alcopops rise earlier this year, although the Senate this week approved the Government keeping nearly $424 million in revenue already collected.

Mr Turnbull signalled the likely change yesterday, telling the ABC that although the alcopops measure was a tax grab, not a health measure, "we will assess it when they re-present the legislation. We recognise the Government does need revenue at this time."

All this because Rudd hinted--just hinted--at a DD.

The Fibs are broke, way down in the polls and will do anything to avoid a DD! Now UTurnbull blinked, Rudd can really put on the pressure, bet the Fibs (but not the Nuts) will vote FOR the CPRS with the 25% target!

The Nuts are crazy! Agriculture is not yet included but once it is then just by good farming practices farmers can earn an extra income from carbon credit! Neanderthal ideology gone wild! Meantime, farmers are suffering really prolonged drought still in many places.

[Jovial Monk]

Todays OO:

Certainly, the economy did grow more than 4 per cent a year after the recessions of the early 1980s and the early '90s. But Australian households were not nearly so indebted in those days. The enormousness of borrowings by governments around the world - as well as the influence of such a large and synchronised downturn - also suggests that eventual recovery will be slower and patchier.

That writer forgot one thing: the part of the cash handouts that were saved and should accelerate any recovery from the recession as people start spending that part.

[Rainbow Moonlight]

Interesting Howard coming otu and having a say. Bit of a joke i thought for him to say that Rudd had made the recession here worse through his decisions. The only decision Howard actually could suggest may have had an influence was reversing Work Choices.

[Auzgurl]

Its not surprising Monk to see him up there shooting his mouth off.. he should stay right out of it.

[Jovial Monk]

And wasn't it nice of the senile old fool to remind people of WorkChoices? The only policy the Fibs have!

[Auzgurl]

And wasn't it nice of the senile old fool to remind people of WorkChoices? The only policy the Fibs have!

yes I threw up in my mouth..just a little..

[Jovial Monk]

KEN Henry must have realised by now that his Treasury Department let the nation down at the last federal election.

The charter of budget honesty was meant to take the guesswork out of fiscal policy for voters because it gave Treasury the opportunity to update the numbers in the middle of thecampaign.

We were told there would be surpluses into the next decade. In fact, the budget was shot at the time of the election because too much of the revenue windfall from the resources boom had been handed back as tax cuts and increased spending.

“The structural budget balance deteriorated from 2002-03, moving into structural deficit in 2006-07,” Treasury said in budget paper No1 on Tuesday night.

The Coalition will resist this reading of recent history. It will want to argue that a larger surplus on paper in the good times would have been untenable because the electorate wanted its money back.

It should give up now. Peter Costello left a trail of clues in the extensive interviews he gave to authors before and after the election that John Howard’s mania for spending was damaging the integrity of the budget.

Also, as Malcolm Turnbull would know, the party that offered the more spending at the last election lost. For all its supposed greed, the Australian electorate did have the sense to sack a government trying to buy a fifth term.

George Megalogenis in the OO

http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/ ... _beholder/

Of course, none of Tip's budget was in structural surplus--asset sales went mainly to let the drip show a budget cash surplus. In the meantime, infrastructure rotted, education & public hospitals etc etc declined. Still those fuckwits are history now.

[Jovial Monk]

Costello’s marvellous economic management:

Grossing up the figures is itself misleading because the first two years, 2008-09 and 2009-10, are recession years when governments would reasonably be expected to front-end load their stimulus. So let's look instead to the full recovery year, 2011-12, to get a better gauge of the structure of the budget.

A projected surplus of $18.87billion for that year is now a deficit of $44.53 billion - a turnaround of $63.4 billion.

This is the bit the Coalition will want to ignore. Labor's spending in 2011-12 is worth $13.2 billion, of which $6.95 billion came from the budget. The remaining $50.2 billion gap is largely Peter Costello's doing. He left behind a budget structure that couldn't return to surplus in recovery.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/st ... 04,00.html

Key part of the article, in my opinion:

The problem is neither side of politics is prepared to recommend cuts deep enough to close the structural deficit.

Howard & Costello were economic vandals. Only economic illiterates and Fib loving sheeple (Hi Sheepy!) let the mining boom hide the many many crap decisions V1 & V2 made. Well, they are paying for them now.