We didn't have a recession in Australia technically speaking.  There was a serious downturn, but no negative growth.

We didn't outperform China, and the real reason Australia did so well was due to resources and the fact that China kept buying the stuff that comes out of the ground in Australia. That's all there is to it.

The government had nothing to do with it.

The government does play a significant role. The difficulty is in figuring out when to take a 'hands off' approach and when to intervene. The rhetoric you hear from the two major parties is often wildly inaccurate. At it's best, it only just scratches the surface of what is really going on.

The parties do have access to the most intelligent economists, but they also have access to opinion polls, and in the end it is the opinion polls that count. The only saviour in this situation is that the public and the press also have access to those economists. With a few recent exceptions, they go to far more effort than most academics to keep the press informed, or at least correct the obvious mistakes.

If you have an interest, I would strongly recommend studying a bit of economics. It is one of the most enlightening and interesting topics I have delved into.

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That's a bit of a pressing question isn't it Happy?
Do we ever need to repay debts, or is it just smoke and mirrors?

As FD alluded to, world economics is a very different animal than the usual debt animal that us plebs are forced to fight everyday.
There is really no necessity to repay national debts, because a nation's money realizes itself for what it is - just a gauge.

Every nation has debt, and there's not much value in forcing another nation to repay it's debt because that would not be productive to the particluar nation's economy, or to the world economy.

At one stage, Clinton even offered to wipe the slate clean of debt to some of the poorer nations in close proximity to the U.S.

The U.S. has loaned money from China, but if they were forced to pay it back, China's economy would then suffer.
So, it's a very different mentality than the one that we live by, although us plebs need to keep the faith in it for all economies to work.

The Greeks have been charging and teargassing their citizens for a while now.
They did so when their citizens tried to revolt against unfair treatment, extremely similar to the treatment of our own citizens that we endured with the apathy that has come to be accepted within this country.

If we stood up for our rights, then I have no doubt that we'd be teargassed as well.
It's nothing at all to do with "national debt", it's all to do with control of the people.
National debt is all but insignificant.

The Greek debt is in euros, not their former national currency. The Greek govt can't just issue Euros because it is controlled by the ECB.

We, OTOH, or rather our govt, can issue dollars whenever it wants and repayment of our national debt is not a problem.

Ah the hoary old chestnut "China kept us going." If that is the case, why are WA & Qld the slowest growing, highest unemployment states? Our terms of trade plummeted with the onset of the GFC and volumes plunged as well.

Keatings floating of the dollar saw us through the Asian meltdown and helped here but the govt's prompt, targeted big stimulus really helped. without the wholesale funding guarantee at least one of the big four banks would have fallen over, unable to repay and re-borrow huge lumps of money--$160Bn was borrowed under the guarantee.

Amadd wrote on Jan 2^nd, 2010 at 10:12pm:

Not unless those nations in debt want to go on paying interest forever, without receiving anything further in compensation

Amadd wrote on Jan 2^nd, 2010 at 10:12pm:


A gauge of what?

Amadd wrote on Jan 2^nd, 2010 at 10:12pm:


The world is comprised only of nations, so let us take care of the nations and the world economy will take care of itself.
Your claim "that forcing another nation to repay it's debt would not be productive to the particluar nation's economy" is obviously wrong from the point of view of the nation receiving payment... especially if it is paying a higher interest rate on monies it borrows than on monies it is owed. Collecting monies owed and using it to pay off loans outstanding is an obvious strategy for them.

Amadd wrote on Jan 2^nd, 2010 at 10:12pm:


No doubt Clinton would be even happier to have all the debts of the USA wiped clean!  Whilst it keeps on squandering money on unnecessary wars, the USA has demonstrated no ability to pay off the loans itself.

Amadd wrote on Jan 2^nd, 2010 at 10:12pm:


Are you referring to money the USA has borrowed from China? If that money were repaid, China would have more wealth, the USA less. How is that going to make China's economy suffer?

Darwin wrote on Mar 8^th, 2010 at 9:19am:

If that were true Darwin, the govt could have issued the extra dollars in the first place, without  borrowing from anyone.  Of course the govt is constrained in how much money it can issue, by the damaging inflation that issuing too much money can cause.

With economic thinking like that on the loose Amadd, it's no wonder we see nearly everyone in debt, and economic crises both behind and ahead of us!   Many places have no real need to continually trade, export and grow, despite what misled politicians and commentators might tell you. Australia for example could be almost completely self-sufficient if we wanted to be, having reserves of nearly all known minerals and natural resources.