Why do we listen to any of these bozos?
Ever.
And why do we pay them $1m annual salaries?!
Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens argues that economic forecasts should not be seen as handed down from the oracles.
Umm. We’re paying you $1.05m per year mate. Tell us something we don’t know.
He had the Reserve Bank staff review their own accuracy and found that 12 months into the future, they got the gross domestic product number right to within 0.5 percentage points only 20 per cent of the time.
Brilliant.
Our long term “trend growth” is around 2.5% (and falling).
And yet, the RBA’s self-review shows that these elite economic forecasters only get their GDP growth forecast accurate to within about 20% … on one-in-five occasions.
I have a suggestion.
Sack the lot of them. Abolish the RBA. And replace them with a hat containing 5 slips of paper. The slips can be marked in 0.5% increments, from 1% through 3%.
The World’s Greatest Treasurer can draw one slip of paper out of the hat for the May budget. And another for the Mid Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) update.
Voila!
Economic forecasting of equal accuracy to the RBA’s elite, criminally overpaid #JAFA’s.
Imagine how much taxpayer money we would save.
Barnaby Is Right 
Maybe they all went to school with the overpaid Climate Commissioners?
They need to be consigned to oblivion, too, for all they are worth for our huge THEIR salaries!
It’s all Labor can do: spend and waste our taxes at the same time!
Can we make it a spherical dome withs spinning balls instead? It could immediately follow the drawing of the lotto numbers.
LOL, a Lotto analogy was my first thought too Richo.
Hi Guys, This is probably a bit off topic, but I Really need to ventilate. I hope you’ll indulge me…..
And so this is Christmas, and what have we done? Another year over……
We been forced to watch as our fantastic country has been poured down the toilet towards economic disaster by a bunch of, at best, incompetent, and at worst, treasonous fools and morons.
We have housing going down, retailing going down, mining slowing down, shares and stocks going down,(& up a bit and then down some more) economic activity everywhere going down, employment going down, happiness going down.
And interest rates, they’re going down……but not for long. And when they too start going up, that’s when the S will really H the F!!
Well something’s got to be going up! That’s right, government debt levels (last check, it was $228 billion??help me out here BI), unemployment, mortgage stress, senior executive salaries, politicians salaries,(did Craig Thompson get a 40 percent pay rise too for his contributions to the sex industry?).Food prices, fuel prices, electricity prices. Then there’s the increasing number of useless bureaucrats, increasing taxes and surchages, fees and tariffs. Fines and penalties too.. Yep, there’s lots of things going up.
I sit here in chilly old Bremen, Northern Germany, suffering from catastrophic global warming (BRRRRR!!) (NOT), enjoying my front-row seat watching first hand the implosion of that brilliant piece of social and economic engineering, the european union, implode in real time. Who designed this mess? Probably a politician, a bureaucrat or a banker. Probably a mix of all three!! And to think that the silly old Greeks jiggled their books, with the help of our old friends from Goldman Sachs (Hi Mal, we’re watching you) to be allowed in. I wonder if, now that the european credit card has been thoroughly maxed out, and the bill is now due, whether they think, with the benefit of hindsight, that it was such a good idea to join. Anyone for an Austerity Riot??
Which makes me wonder about the wisdom of we Aussies allowing ourselves to be dragged into the next great social and economic experiment, Apec. The Asia Pacific economic Council. But Julia seems to think it makes good sense. She was recently running around the Pacific somewhere, minding someone elses business, as she does, bleating about Free Trade, and closer ties. You know, all the usual stuff.
But this is the same woman/politician who thinks other things are good ideas too. Things like NBNs, Pink Batts, BeRs, MRRTs (just as the mining boom busts) MDBAs (because you can’t let farmers have water to irrigate-hell, they might grow some food), Carbon Taxes (sorry, make that a Bankster generated, Carbon Dioxide Derivative Trading Platform), shutting down the live cattle trade in the NT, shutting down the coal mining industry, stopping logging activities in Tassy, flip-flopping on flogging Uranium to India, blowing out the Federal Budget to around $230 billion in 4 yrs, giving cash handouts to support Asian electronics industries,..encouraging people smuggling, and appointing a global corporation like Serco(who the hell is Serco, anyway??) to run our Gulags for us, again at considerable cost to the long-suffering taxpayer..
If you wanted to destroy the economic structure and fabric of a nation, you couldn’t make a better choice than appointing the current Labor government.
Not that I think this is really a “Labor” government. Labor was the party of the working man. The guy who rolled his sleeves up and worked hard, played hard, drank hard. You know who I mean. The bloke you couldn’t help but admire. So he voted for his political team, like my tradie mates still do. Fair enough. But they mis-spelt “Labor”. They are being conned by the modern Labor politician. Todays Labor pollie has never handled a shovel, can’t wire up a house, couldn’t fix an engine, can’t change a washer or a light bulb, and has certainly never milked a cow or driven a tractor.
What he/she can do is think up smarmy one-liners to insult his constituents, he can stare straight into a TV camera and lie with conviction about giving a rats arse about the average punter. Today’s Labor politician is adept at explaining unusual official Credit Card activity at brothels and restaurants,(Craig) is not above threatening staff members at hospitality venues with the loss of their jobs if a table isn’t immediately made available for them,(eh Belinda), is a master of the “late night meeting” with “business associates” hoping to secure “NO BID” mining leases all over the country side. He is a whizz at lining his own pocket at the expense of the citizen. He/she are charlatans.
This mob is not the Real McCoy. It’s a wolf in sheeps’ clothing. It’s a cobbled-together mish mash of self interested “Save the Worlders” with a bunch of political opportunists with economics & law degrees and stints at the UN,(like Craig emrson our Trade Minister) Anthony Albanese (remember him with his smarmy side swipe at “the Convoy of NO confidence” calling it instead “the convoy of No Consequence”.)
It’s a mob trading on the fond memory of probably well meaning and patriotic Labor politicians of days gone by. Chifly, Curtin. Those guys. They”d roll over in their graves if they could see this current lot.
No, I’m afraid this lot aren’t there for us. Nobody could be THIS bad by accident. And if it’s not accidental, then it’s deliberate. And if it’s deliberate, then it’s treason.
And that’s a hanging offense. (or should be)
We’ve asked for an election. We’ve demanded an election, and they laughed at us and gave us a Carbon Tax. They’ve lied, cheated, given themselves a 40 percent pay rise whilst battlers who voted for them (and those of us who didn’t) struggle.
Maybe we just have to occupy Federal Parliament and have them arrested!!
It’s time to call a spade a Bloody Shovel. Yes indeed, it’s long past time.
I feel better having gotten that off my chest..
Tomorrow’s Serf.When the private banking system creates from nothing the money to equal growth + inflation as debt, there can only be one outcome.More debt and no growth = poverty.
A couple of days ago you reported that the RBA was secretly bailed out by the US Fed. If that’s the case why aren’t these monkeys sacked en masse. Let’s review their form – couldnt keep the country solvent and one of their subsidiaries that prints currency is involved in a massive corruption scandal. Why do we pay these guys at all with this track record?
Exactly right John. A bunch of grossly overpaid criminal tea-leaf readers, the lot of ’em.
You forgot Treasury they do exactly the same thing at our expense and probably are about as accurate. But I do have this radical idea that a government should actually base their budget on revenue in the previous year the same way a person or business will do. It is also the same way a bank works they will not lend you money because you think you will be richer next year they will say what did you earn last year.