Tag Archives: budget

Regions Lose Under Budget

12 May

Media Release – Senator Barnaby Joyce, 12 May 2010:

Senator Barnaby Joyce asked today, “What has regional Australia been given in this budget?”

“Australia is heading toward a peak debt position, so the Labor Party tells us, of $222 billion. However, they are so totally unbelievable with every other prediction they make, you can take this prediction with a grain of salt.

Their plan to pay for their stuff ups comes from another attack on the mining wealth of regional Australia. Trouble is the stuff ups seem to be continuing at break neck pace. The Labor Party has managed to avoid this absurd form of economics since the attempt to nationalise the banks in 1949.

If you tax the mining profits to 57 per cent, the mining companies will be sure to be highly motivated to do one of two things. Move their operation to somewhere else or move their profits somewhere else. With the presence of vertically integrated cross border mining companies in Australia, this will not be as hard as some think. The trick will be how you trace profits. I can see a lot of hard work and brave souls that will have to exist in the tax department if this tax ever comes in.

The only sensible thing to do is to stop the tax. Mining has provided many regional areas with a once in a lifetime chance for development and the Labor Party has once more become a  parasite on the benefits.

If the Labor Party was interested in getting a fair deal for regional Australia, they would have announced in the budget a plan to return some of these extra funds to the areas where they were generated.

This budget is yet another promise the Australian people are expected to believe even though the Labor party has never got within a bulls roar of being an economically responsible government.

This time we’re supposed to believe they will be earnest, just like when they were earnest about the ‘greatest moral challenge of our time’,” said Senator Joyce.

More Information- Jenny Swan 0438 578 402

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Another Week, Another $1.8Bn In Debt

3 May

The Rudd borrowed-money spendathon continues.

Already $138.5bn in the hole, this week alone the Australian Office of Financial Management (AOFM) reports that another $1.8bn in Commonwealth securities and Treasury notes will be auctioned off, to raise money for yet more wasteful spending.

Meanwhile, the interest rates that the government must offer to pay to attract buyers for our sovereign bonds continues to steadily rise.

From The Australian:

The government is facing a battle to keep costs under its self-imposed 2 per cent growth cap, with blowouts in some programs and higher interest payments adding to the deficit.

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Yields On Aussie Bonds Rising

8 Apr

And so it begins.

Have we just heard the ‘canary in the coalmine’ of government debt pause its happy singing?  When the government finds it has to start offering higher yields in order to sell its longer-dated sovereign bonds, you know that the market is beginning to smell inflation… and/or, losing faith in the government’s ability to pay up on maturity.

From The Australian:

The federal government drew solid demand today for an auction of new July 2022 bonds, its longest nominal debt on issue, but had to pay an attractive premium to sell the bonds.

In the latest extension of its yield curve, the Australian Office of Financial Management sold $1.0 billion of 5.75 per cent July 2022 bonds with a weighted average yield of 5.9642 per cent.

“The Commonwealth had to pay up to get good demand,” Westpac strategist Damien McColough said, noting good interest from buyers on yields closer to the 6.0 per cent level.

Over the past two months, the yield on the more common 10-year Australian Government bonds has risen from 5.48% to 5.85%.

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Labor Less ‘Creative’ Than Greece

19 Mar

From the Korea Times:

The Greek crisis is a textbook example of the interconnectedness of the global economy and the foreign policy environment.

For most of the last decade, the Greek economy grew faster than others in the euro area. Yet, the country’s balance sheets worsened.

(Sound familiar?)

So, when the global recession hit, and the Greek economy contracted by 2 percent in 2009, international bond markets panicked, fearing that Athens was going to have trouble meeting its obligations. By mid-February the Greek government was paying three percentage points more to borrow money than the interest rate charged Germany, worsening the mismatch between Greek revenues and expenditures.

Wall Street bears some of the blame for this mess. Goldman Sachs and possibly other American financial institutions reportedly helped Athens understate its true indebtedness through the creation of innovative financial instruments.

The Rudd Government has used a more traditional way to understate our true indebtedness. ‘Creative accounting’. Or ‘cooking the books’.

First, Rudd Labor has made changes to the ‘methodology’ used for reporting Gross Domestic Product (GDP).  And they have applied those changes to all the previously reported Budget numbers too.  The result?  A “substantial increase” in Australia’s GDP.  As much as (eg) 4.5% per annum added to the real, inflation-adjusted GDP that was originally reported in the Howard Government’s 2006-07 Final Budget Outcome.

The benefit to Rudd Labor in making this “substantial increase” to GDP in the historical data, is that their spending (as a percentage of that GDP) looks lower.  Their annual spending growth (as a percentage of GDP) looks lower. Their debt (as a percentage of GDP) looks lower. And, their Interest-on-debt (as a percentage of GDP) looks lower too. This explains why Rudd Labor politicians always love to quote everything in percentages. “As a percentage of GDP”.

Second, Rudd Labor has also changed the ‘methodology’ used to calculate the inflation-adjusted value of ‘real’ spending growth.  This was a sudden decision, for the November 2009 MYEFO budget update. The result? The Rudd Government’s reported ‘real spending growth’ is a whopping 30.1% lower under their new calculation method.

Finally, Rudd Labor lies about the GFC whenever it needs to defend its massive spending spree. They have repeatedly told the public that “the GFC punched a huge hole in our projected revenues”.  But the official Budget documents show that this is a lie.  In the May 2009 Budget, the estimated government “Receipts” were only 2.7% lower than for the previous year.  And by the November MYEFO update, government revenues were expected to be slightly higher than for the previous year.

Please follow those links. View for yourself the actual Budget documents that show how Rudd Labor have ‘cooked the books’.

You will see that, unlike Greece, our Labor Government does not need to hide our true state of indebtness through the use of creative financial instruments.

They use good old-fashioned ‘creative accounting’ instead.

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Junk Bond ‘Apocalypse’ in 2012

18 Mar

From the New York Times:

When the Mayans envisioned the world coming to an end in 2012 — at least in the Hollywood telling — they didn’t count junk bonds among the perils that would lead to worldwide disaster.

Maybe they should have, because 2012 also is the beginning of a three-year period in which more than $700 billion in risky, high-yield corporate debt begins to come due, an extraordinary surge that some analysts fear could overload the debt markets.

With huge bills about to hit corporations and the federal government around the same time, the worry is that some companies will have trouble getting new loans, spurring defaults and a wave of bankruptcies.

The United States government alone will need to borrow nearly $2 trillion in 2012, to bridge the projected budget deficit for that year and to refinance existing debt.

The apocalyptic talk is not limited to perpetual bears and the rest of the doom-and-gloom crowd.

Even Moody’s, which is known for its sober public statements, is sounding the alarm.

“An avalanche is brewing in 2012 and beyond if companies don’t get out in front of this,” said Kevin Cassidy, a senior credit officer at Moody’s.

Private equity firms and many nonfinancial companies were able to borrow on easy terms until the credit crisis hit in 2007, but not until 2012 does the long-delayed reckoning begin for a series of leveraged buyouts and other deals that preceded the crisis.

The attacks on Barnaby Joyce’s economic credibility began in late 2009, when he publicly questioned whether the US could default on its debts.

Take a look at this chart.

It’s from the US Federal Reserve, using data sourced from The White House Office of Management and Budget. It shows the US Budget surplus / deficit for the last 108 years. But only up to September last year.

It’s far worse today.

Barnaby is right.

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Labor Fakes GDP By 4.5%

17 Mar

*This post follows on from my recent article, “Labor: Hide The Increase”.  There, I showed that the Rudd Government has fiddled the books to hide their massive increase in borrowing and spending. Please read the article for background to this new article.

In the fine print on the Rudd Government’s Budget 2009-10 MYEFO website, we learned that Rudd Labor made a change in the accounting method that was previously used to calculate Gross Domestic Product (GDP).  This change resulted in a “substantial increase” to the official GDP figures:

* The 2008-09 Annual National Accounts show a substantial increase in the level of GDP over history due to the ABS adopting the new System of National Accounts 2008. Given the degree of increase in the level of nominal GDP, the Government has released updated tables of fiscal aggregates contained within Appendix D of the 2009-10 MYEFO.

So just how much is that “substantial increase”?

4.5%. Or $47bn. In just one year.

Here’s a chart I’ve put together from the official Australian Government Budget data. It shows my reverse calculation* of the value (in $millions) of Rudd Labor’s “revisions” to historic GDP.

That is, it shows just how much the Rudd government has simply tacked on to the previously-reported official GDP figures (click to enlarge):

Rudd Labor "revisions" to past GDP figures

This chart only goes up to 2006-07.  The last year of a Coalition government Budget report.

That is because the Rudd government has gone back and “revised” the figures in the Rudd Labor 2007-08 and 2008-09 Final Budget Outcome documents too.  So I could not find the original reported figures for those years in order to calculate the GDP, and compare to their newly “revised” figures.

Even so, you can easily see that Rudd Labor’s “revisions” to past GDP are indeed, a “substantial increase”.  For the 2006-07 year – the last year that I am able to compare original vs “revised” figures – it appears that they have adjusted GDP upwards by $47 billion (4.49%) over the original figures reported by the Howard Government.

Of course, we can easily perceive just why Rudd Labor would wish to do this….

Continue reading ‘Labor Fakes GDP By 4.5%’

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US, UK To Lose AAA Credit Ratings

16 Mar

From Bloomberg:

The U.S. and the U.K. have moved “substantially” closer to losing their AAA credit ratings as the cost of servicing their debt rose, according to Moody’s Investors Service.

“Those economies have been caught in a crisis while they are highly leveraged,” (Moody’s managing director sovereign risk in London, Pierre) Cailleteau said, referring to the level of private and public debt as a percentage of gross domestic product.

Visit the website of Australian Professor Steve Keen, to learn why unprecedented private debt is huge threat to the Australian economy. Even greater than the Rudd government’s ever-growing public debt.

* On April 15th through 23rd, I will be joining Professor Keen in his 230km “Keenwalk” from Parliament House to Mount Kosciuszko, in protest against Australia’s property mania that has been driven directly by insane – and in my personal opinion, immoral – Federal Government and RBA policies, that have enticed hundreds of thousands of financially vulnerable Australians to take on large mortgage debts.

Please consider joining us, for the whole trek or even just for an afternoon section of the walk.

If you’d care to assist a genuinely worthy cause, then please consider sponsoring Professor Keen, or indeed myself. Funds raised will support the wonderful charity Swags For Homeless.

Thanks!

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Tanner Lies About Budget, GFC

11 Mar

Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner has demonstrated yet again that he is a liar and a fraud:

Lindsay Tanner today accused the Opposition of punching a $2 billion hole in the budget after it helped defeat a means test on the private health insurance rebate last night.

“Tony Abbott and the Liberal Party are blocking almost all the government’s major initiatives in the Senate these days,” Mr Tanner told ABC radio.

“We faced a huge budget problem as a result of the global financial crisis. We have to repair the damage to the budget and we have to get the budget back into surplus as quickly as possible.”

“Yet he’s punched a huge hole in our savings initiatives that are designed to get the budget back into surplus quickly.”

In a recent column for the Sydney Morning Herald, ironically and hypocritically titled “Dishonesty in the debt debate”, Lindsay Tanner wrote:

Why are we going into debt?  Because the global financial crisis punched a huge hole in our projected revenues, and forced us to act to support the economy and to sustain jobs.  Had we just sat back and watched, as our opponents seem to suggest, we would have seen unemployment rise dramatically.  That would have reduced tax revenues even further, and thus pushed us into deficit anyway… The Rudd government had no choice but to intervene to protect Australian working people from the ravages of the crisis.  The dishonest campaign about debt being prosecuted by our opponents should be seen for the fraud it is.

Tanner’s claim that the GFC “punched a huge hole” in the government’s projected revenues, is an outright lie. And I will prove it to you, from the government’s own Budget documents.

The real reason that Rudd Labor faces a “huge budget problem” is not a result of the global financial crisis. Instead, it is entirely a result of their panicked, monumentally incompetent response to the idea of a GFC.

The simple fact is this: Contrary to Tanner’s recent claim, and Labor’s shrill proclamations throughout 2009, the GFC barely affected Australian government revenues at all. The “huge budget problem” is entirely of the Rudd Government’s own making. Because their team of uneducated economic illiterates panicked, and went on a massive, unnecessary spending binge. And now they are lying to cover up that fact.

Want proof?

Take a look at the Government’s 2009-10 Budget, Statement 10, released in May 2009.  It shows that Government income (“Receipts”) was estimated to be down by just $7.8bn (2.7%) on the previous year –

Continue reading ‘Tanner Lies About Budget, GFC’

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Budget Oversight Office Needed For Australia

6 Mar

From Bloomberg:

Obama Budget Underestimates Deficit Over 10 Years, CBO Says

President Barack Obama’s budget proposal would generate bigger deficits than advertised each year for the next decade, with the 10-year shortfall totaling $1.2 trillion more than the administration estimated, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The nonpartisan CBO, in an annual analysis of the White House budget proposal, said today that under Obama’s plan deficits would never shrink below 4 percent of the economy between now and 2020. The cumulative deficits would total $9.76 trillion, and debt held by the public would amount to 90 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product by 2020, the CBO said.

By 2020, the federal debt would grow to $20.3 trillion under Obama’s budget, according to CBO.

Those figures are all higher than the administration estimated last month…

On March 3rd I drew attention to how Rudd Labor has doctored the 2009-10 Budget numbers, to show both a higher GDP, and lower government spending, in the current year and in the forward projections.

It is high time that Australia had an independent, nonpartisan Budget Oversight Office, to forensically examine and then alert the public to the highly dubious accounting practices employed by the government to make itself appear far more fiscally responsible than it actually is.

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Markets Chief: No Escape For Australia

4 Mar

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

Australia is unlikely to avoid an imminent economic downturn caused by excessive government debt, a top European markets regulator says.

”Prepare for a very difficult economic time, which you will not be able to escape,” Netherlands Authority for Financial Markets chairman Hans Hoogervorsttold the Australian Securities and Investment Commission summer school yesterday.

The debt taken on by governments around the world to bail out banks and stimulate domestic economies would take ”a tremendous toll on the world economy for a long time to come”, he said.

”The problem is that there is now too much on the shoulders of government. They have basically taken on all the problems caused by the financial crisis, with the effect that most of them are in really, truly horrible budgetary shape.”

He said the only way out was for the public and private sectors to tighten spending and repay the debt.

”The problems are so serious there are no easy ways out any more,” he said. ”It is simply inevitable that economic growth for a long period will be very meagre.” And Australia’s economic luck during the financial crisis would run out, he said, because the stimulus programs running in Asian countries, which had fuelled demand for Australian resources, could not last forever.

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