AC Nielsen poll - voters back Rudd on economy

[Leftofcentresalterego]

Reported in this morning's Australian.

59% of those surveyed approve of the governments handling of the crisis.

46% want the spending to continue as planned.

10% say it should be increased.

Those who dissaprove are rusted on coalition voters and those who have been swayed to believe that the government that issues the currency cannot fulfill repayments in it's own currency of issue despite the fact that they are the source and despite the fact that spending that sucessfully stimulates economic activity lowers the governments welfare bill and raises tax receipts (without any necessity for anyone to actually pay a higher RATE of tax).

Ok, so I added the last bit myself, but it's a fact as far as I'm concerned.

It also shows that were an election to be held today, the coalition would be trounced (no surprises there ).

As I have argued before though, there is no room for complacency. 27% still reported being financially worse off as a result of the crisis. Allbull and sloppy Joe's approach - slash spending - would hardly improve these people's situation. Or most of us for that matter.

As usual, I have tech problems - link will not work this morning. It's in this morning's The Australian. Get it while it's hot

[Jovial Monk]

Who cares about the Opposition Orifice? Possum has the good psephological oil

It seems 76% approve of the govt's handling of the GFC or wanted it to go further.

If you want to watch sheer desperation and denial have a look at the rightwing wankers on Pies' bog:

http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph ... substance/

[Jovial Monk]

Report card on Dubya's regime:

The U.S. Census bureau:

Thursday's annual Census Bureau report on income, poverty and access to health care-the Bureau's principal report card on the well-being of average Americans-closes the books on the economic record of George W. Bush.

It's not a record many Republicans are likely to point to with pride.

On every major measurement, the Census Bureau report shows that the country lost ground during Bush's two terms. While Bush was in office, the median household income declined, poverty increased, childhood poverty increased even more, and the number of Americans without health insurance spiked. By contrast, the country's condition improved on each of those measures during Bill Clinton's two terms, often substantially.

http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/09 ... legacy.php

Note that the Census bureau very properly uses the median instead of mean (average.) Howard & his cronies were constantly talking about average wages after WC was introduced--the highly paid miners made the average look good but did not change the median. When describing or comparing two populations the median is the measure to use as it is much less sensitive to outliers than the mean. In the end they were just using the meaningless term "real wages."

[skippy]

I'd like to see the same figures under Howard, for all his chest pumping many people under the rodent went from full employment to part employment,tho he didn't care, even as little as a few hours a week was enough to fudge the unemployment numbers.

[Jovial Monk]

To be pedantic for once Howard did really fudge unemployment but not by the "one hour a week is employed" which is used everywhere, crap measure tho that is! No, they fudged by say, not counting as unemployed those engaged in teh paint-a-rock work for the dole scheme. A lot of 50s something unemployed were put on the disability pension to get them out the workforce.

Rudd, to his credit, has acknowledged the underemployment problem.

[Leftofcentresalterego]

76% truly is a huge margin of approval!

And dear old pies. Rudd is a "malignant narcissist" says pies. Rudd is "extremely self-absorbed, intollerant of others perspectives, insensitive to others needs and indifferent to the effect of his own egocentric behaviour" says pies. Then pies realised that he was talking about himself

[Homer Simpson]

Mmmmmmmm pies........

......what wait, pies can talk?

[Jovial Monk]

Oh man, try and read the comments on Pies' bog. . .all the most ignorant ranters are there, those with some sense have long gone, probably because Pies no longer publishes those comments.

The fuckwit is still banging on about Heiner! Heiner (a retired magistrate holding the enquiry into the management of the Oxley Youth Centre) taped a lot of interviews slamming the management and became uneasy about the evidence he accumulated--that he could be sued for libel etc if he ever published his report. An aboriginal teenager was gangraped by inmates of the Centre and Pies is trying to link the enquiry to this. It wasn't, the enquiry had been set up wrongly and the evidence collected was shredded. Pies of course says Rudd ordered the shredding to cover up something. Pigsarse, the enquiry was set up by the Cooper Qld National govt, any adverse findings and Goss could use it to slam the Nats--I challenged him on this some time ago and he had no real reply. Tosser!

[Leftofcentresalterego]

Started reading the comments on Ackerman's blog. Just couldn't keep reading ..........spew!

What a pack of pathetic losers. Let them stew in their own sour brew of loathing and self-delusion.

I still can't believe that Ackerman, in attacking Rudd, came up with a better descriptive summary for himself than I could have thought of

[Leftofcentresalterego]

"AUSTRALIA'S economic stimulus package is delivering a bigger boost to employment than those of any other advanced country and the benefits could be felt for up to a decade, according to the OECD.

The Paris-based policy advisory authority said that action by governments and central banks had averted a depression. However, it still expected the unemployment rate in advanced countries to average about 10 per cent next year. This would compare with a peak of 7.5 per cent in the 1990s recession.

The OECD said that as imports were a smaller share of the economy in Australia than in other nations, more of the benefit from stimulus spending would stay in the country": in this morning's oppositio orifice

Well there you have it folks. Former neo-liberal cheer squads like the OECD and the IMF have become born again Keynesians. They have seen the light on fiscal activism. They agree that it has averted a great depression style event.

I sense a change in the air. We should be shitcanning this ridiculous "budget surpluses are always good" mantra. Imagine what would have happened if everyone had tried to run surpluses or even just balance national budgets when the shitstorm hit?

Notice that some countries were already running budget deficits when all hell broke loose. Did that stop them from passing big economic stimuli? NO!

We should not be in any hurry to return to surplus. You will note that the preoccupation with trying to run permanent surpluses has only come about in the past 15 years or so. In order to believe that surpluses can be run indefinately, you have to believe that the private sector is capable of generating it's own stable financial assets indefinately, without any help from the issuer of the currency.

Budget surpluses are in no way national savings. A modern government has no greater or lesser capacity to spend simply because it has amassed a surplus. "Amass" is the wrong word in a modern fiat monetary economy anyway - there is no stock of money there, it is just an accounting construct.

You cannot run big surpluses and engage in nation building proper at the same time. You are simply draining the system, the federal government surplus equalling the private sector net deficit. The last big surplus run up saw the biggest run up of private sector debt in our history. This is not a coincidence.

Back to nation building I say!