Surely deflation is a good thing, as it shows a higher quality of life? The logical result of a super-efficent society is that everything is so easy to produce, (its all automated), that nothing should really cost anything anymore.

Welcome to the new world order. What motivates you to do what you do? The numbers game? Or a perfect world where nothing is beyond your reach? Just do not forget what it took to get us here.

The second grand hurrah party is for the Eastern consumer over Chinese New Year in Febuary 2009. Same couch potatos, different location.

The skills sets required to expand development Westward in China is concentrated on the Eastern seaboard. Millions of these skilled workers will go home for Chinese New Year. Will they be brought back East if jobs are not available? Or will it be like Stalins trains out of Chechnya-one way, to work in the factories beyond the Urals? Will the command economy leaders direct vast labour pools with skills to Western Provincial development? When and what rate will the expansion be?

Australia is an island nation. I think 2009 may be the year we tread water-for our economic lives. I see the doldrums dead ahead not trade winds. The downturn finishes in 2010, when Captain Watermelon (Rudd, green on the outside, red on the inside) delivers us from all evil with a CARBON TAX, and a global war on unemployment. Rudd declares public jobs safe.

Politicians superannuation is 50% above the 9% compulsory in private employment.

657 senior public servants spent over one year at home on full pay in NSW, as there was no designated department to shunt them into.
Morris Iemma, gave the NSW public service a pay increase equal to that of miners(10%) in private industry to buy votes.
Coal companies received a tax increase of 42% for coal over $100 per tonne in QLD due to gross government incompetence. Exploration permits in QLD can take from 3 to 9 months out to 5 years to be granted. We all know the situation in WA.

Well, it isn't hard to see where the most lucrative jobs are from above, and it isn't mining.

Mining is based on risk vs reward. The public service is based on NO RISK, ALL REWARD.
With the amount of direct & indirect taxation in private employment, there is only two bon mots left for the workers-- if in the public sector--they pay us and we pretend to work. The private sector will eventually go Soviet--They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work. (due to taxation, inflation, currency devaluation etc.).

Brownshirts, blackshirts and now greenshirts. Join Rudd's Rentier Class, become an economic cannibal and feast on the free marketeers, aka private enterprise. Limited qualifications required-greenshirt (idealogy), brown tongue(remember you are joining a conga line of suckholes)and OPM (other peoples money). Almost the same qualifications as an investment banker and the same bon mot--all reward , no risk (remember derivatives?).

Australia, 2009, drowning, not waving. Australia, 2010, the watermelon messiah declares that the road to hell is paved with good intentions BUT THE ROAD TO HEAVEN IS PAVED WITH RED TAPE. Watermelon whine anyone?

Japan was fortunate, if you can call it that, that there were “bubbles” in two of her main trading partners - China (infrastructure, housing and export bubbles) and America (dot.com and housing bubbles); and she ran up the government debt, now over $7trn.

Who is going to provide such a benign background for the world over the next fifteen years?

Japan’s post-bubble years were in the upwave of the global economic/financial cycle; we are in, or close to a downwave like post-1929, 1873 and 1825.