Kevin Rudd is headed over to America next month to speak with Barrack Obama about climate change, the global financial system, and others ways to save the world and improve on human nature. Perhaps he might ask him if America’s US$1.75 trillion annual deficit for next year should cause global investors to worry about America’s credit quality.
February 27th, 2009 | Dan Denning | 4 comments | ContinuedAll Posts Tagged With: "Kevin Rudd"
The Money Multiplier Goes to Work
Giving people who don’t pay a lot in taxes even more money is even more popular. So in that sense, the arrival of thousands of dollars in government cash to various Aussie households will ‘work’ in the sense that it distracts people from the ongoing disaster that is the world financial crisis. “Look honey! Free bread. Let’s go to the circus!” Please note that shuffling a bit of cash around will not lessen a national debt-to-GDP ratio of around 140%. Nor does it do much to create long-term jobs…
February 4th, 2009 | Dan Denning | 18 comments | Continued
How to Prepare for the Coming Devaluation
Well, yesterday the government said the fall in revenues from the global black swan dive will lead to a $115 billion decline in government tax takings (what the government likes to call revenue). That’s a pretty big hole in the budget. It suggests that we’ve entered an era of regular government budget deficits and, if the RBA holds to form, lower interest rates. These lower rates, and not just in Australia mind you, represent the coming devaluation of paper money against real goods…
February 3rd, 2009 | Dan Denning | 20 comments | Continued
A $4 Trillion ‘Big Bang’
In The Monthly, Rudd plants a Neo-Marxist flag in the ground of the current debate with the kind of jargon-laden elitist preening that makes academic critics of the free market (who’ve never spent a day in the business world creating value) so nauseating. (…)Why not proclaim, since he is apparently in the position to make such proclamations, that the experiment in paper money and the deliberate policy of inflation it implies is theft?…
February 2nd, 2009 | Dan Denning | 21 comments | Continued
The Permanent Portfolio
Today’s Daily Reckoning begins with an outsider’s look at the Australian banking sector. Then we’ll take a Prime Ministerial look. And finally, a Gallic technical trader’s look. All three perspectives suggest that Australia’s banking sector is a lot less insulated from the global crisis than its advocates have suggested. But don’t take our word for it…
January 21st, 2009 | Dan Denning | 17 comments | Continued
Rational Advice for the Emotional Investor
On your markets. Get set. Reflate. Yes the reflation rally’s away. But does it have legs? We keep waiting for the big bounce. It looks like it might finally be here. Stocks were up in New York. So were gold and oil. We grapple again with bubbles this Tuesday. If you are now seeing the vaunted 50% retracement rally in stocks-one that looks a lot like the rally in the first four months of 1930-how broad and deep will it be?
December 9th, 2008 | Dan Denning | 2 comments | Continued
Lehman CDS Auction Hammers Australian Resource Stocks
Finally, Australia gets its own $700 billion plan. Kevin Rudd’s government moved yesterday to slap a Federal guarantee on all deposits with banks, credit unions, and building societies. The $700 billion guarantee includes Australian subsidiaries of foreign owned banks. The government wants people to understand their money is safe in the banks. That’s why that last bit is in there. It’s designed to keep foreign holders of Aussie dollars from engaging in a run on the dollar and bringing their money home.
October 13th, 2008 | Dan Denning | 1 comment | Continued