Tag Archives: stimulus spending

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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ECB: Stark Warning of Eurozone Debt Crisis

17 Mar

From BusinessWeek:

European Central Bank Executive Board member Juergen Stark said the euro region may face a sovereign debt crisis unless governments reduce budget deficits.

There is “a clear risk that we will enter a third wave,” which is “a sovereign debt crisis in most advanced economies,” Stark told lawmakers in the European Parliament in Brussels today.

In Australia, our government is continuing to increase our budget deficit, by refusing to withdraw its woefully incompetent and wasteful “stimulus” spending.

Even though we had no recession, and RBA Governor Glenn Stevens recently referred to 2008-09 as “the mildest downturn” we have had since WW2.

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China Biggest Worry For Markets

17 Mar

Fromt the Wall Street Journal:

Nervousness is growing in the financial markets about China, which might seem odd when there are so many other places to worry about.

There’s still Greece, for example, which is likely to be the focus of this week’s meetings of European finance ministers. There’s Germany, and its trade surplus. And there’s the U.S., the U.K. and all the other places with triple-A-rated debt that may not be rated triple-A for much longer.

So why the focus on China, where shares closed Monday at their lowest in five weeks, with the benchmark Shanghai Composite ending below 3000 at its weakest since Feb. 9? Well, as one bank put it on Monday: “Are we facing a ‘growth miracle’ or will China be the next bubble to burst?”

Even the markets are more cautious on China than Australia’s financial powers, the RBA and the Treasury department. They still believe we are headed for 40 years of “unprecedented prosperity” on the back of a new China-fueled mining boom.

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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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Eurozone Faces ‘Sovereign Debt Explosion’

15 Mar

From the UK’s Telegraph:

Europe’s governments are at increasing risk of an interest rate shock this year as the lingering effects of the Great Recession drive debt issuance to record levels and saturate bond markets, according to Standard & Poor’s.

The warning comes as bond giant PIMCO spoke of a “sovereign debt explosion” that has taken the world into uncharted waters and poses a major threat to economic stability. “Our sense is that the importance of the shock to public finances in advanced economies is not yet sufficiently appreciated and understood,” said Mohamed El-Erian, the group’s chief executive.

Mr El-Erian said most analysts are still using “backward-looking models” that fail to grasp the full magnitude of what has taken place in world affairs since the crisis. Some 40pc of the global economy is in countries where governments are running deficits above 10pc of GDP, with no easy way out.

Australia too, is issuing government debt at record levels – $1.6bn last week, another $2.1bn scheduled for this week.

See the Australian Office of Financial Management’s website.

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China Facing ‘Massive’ Bank Bailouts

14 Mar

From Bloomberg:

China may be forced to bail out banks that made loans for local-government projects under the unprecedented stimulus program unleashed in 2008, according to Citigroup Inc. and Northwestern University’s Victor Shih.

In a “worst-case scenario,” the non-performing loans of local-government investment vehicles could climb to 2.4 trillion yuan ($350 billion) by 2011, Shen Minggao, Citigroup’s Hong Kong-based chief economist for greater China, said yesterday.

“The most likely case is that the Chinese government will engineer a massive financial bailout of the financial sector,” said Shih, a professor who spent months researching borrowing by about 8,000 local government entities.

More on the growing concerns about China’s property bubble and risks to its economy here, and here.

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Labor’s Debt Legacy

12 Mar

Media Release – Senator Barnaby Joyce, 12 March 2010

Senator Barnaby Joyce says that reports in The Australian today confirm what the Coalition has been saying for months on debt and interest rates. Simply put, the Rudd Government’s excessive and profligate spending is putting upward pressure on interest rates.

It is clear that the RBA have resorted to the fastest increases in interest rates among advanced economies in response to the effects of this spending. So while other countries enjoy modest rises, hard working Australians will be paying the price for Labor’s bad management.

There is still a major portion of the $42 billion Nation Building and Jobs Plan to spend and while the Government has almost $128 billion of debt on issue (almost $16,000 per household), this is less than half its projected peak of $270 billion in 2014-15.

Gross debt has risen from $126.183 billion two weeks ago to $127.982 billion today. In two weeks the debt has risen by $1.8 billion. Easy to throw these figures about, but remember, just this increase is enough to seal 9000 kilometres of 6 metre wide road in country Queensland. This would take us from Sydney to Perth and back again and still have money left over.

It is highly unlikely there will be many left of the current Labor members by the time this debt is repaid. In fact quite a few will have passed away, but the debt will still be with us.

More Information- Jenny Swan 0746 251500

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The Net Debt Picture

12 Mar

Here’s a picture that speaks volumes.

From the government’s 2009-10 Mid-Year Fiscal and Economic Outlook, Appendix D, Table D4, I’ve made the following chart tracking official ‘net debt’ since 1982 (click on chart to enlarge) –

Australian Government - Net Debt

I’ve marked the first full budget year for each successive government, from Labor’s Bob Hawke through to Labor’s Kevin Rudd.

See that steep fall in government net debt on the chart?  The one that took the nation from $96.2bn in net debt, down down down to negative $44.82bn in net debt?

Yes. That was a Coalition government.

See the rocket-like launch back UP to unprecedented levels of net debt?  Yes, that’s the Rudd Government’s panicked, totally unnecessary spending binge for you. The one they’ve been lying about.

With much more debt still to come.

After all, they borrowed another $1.6bn just this week. See the AOFM website, and click on the links under ‘Recent Tender Results”.

And next week, they’re planning to borrow another $2.1bn.

The massive, multi-billion dollar cockups in every single “stimulus” spending program, will only add to their… OUR… huge and unpayable debts.

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Australia Only OECD Nation With Rising Debt

11 Mar

From Marketwatch:

Australia’s seemingly bulletproof economy could soon face fallout from high debt levels and purportedly misguided policies designed to pump up asset prices, according to an outspoken skeptic of the nation’s housing boom.

Economist Steve Keen of the University of Western Sydney, who claims* to have accurately foreseen the global financial crisis, said he’s been dismayed by what he sees as a growing nationwide housing bubble stoked by government efforts to forestall economic pain.

Keen points to a first-time homebuyer subsidy program, various other stimulus programs, and a 4-percentage-point reduction in interest rates — policies introduced in the wake of the 2008 crash and which he termed “The Boost” — as having helped fueled a new housing boom and a 6% rise in mortgage debt last year.

“The Boost has … given Australia a dubious distinction when compared to the rest of the OECD. Yes, we are the only country that avoided a technical recession; but we are also the only country where debt levels are rising once more compared to GDP, rather than falling” …

*Proof of Professor Keen’s “claim” can be independently verified in this research paper, which references a handful of economists who did predict the GFC in advance.

UPDATE:

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.

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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