There is a saying: Whatever you do comes back to you


http://www.cnbc.com/id/38654017

America Is a 'Bankrupt Mickey Mouse Economy'

CNBC Senior News Editor

America is a "Mickey Mouse economy" that is technically bankrupt, according to Jochen Wermuth, the Chief Investment Officer (CIO) and managing partner at Wermuth Asset Management.

"America today looks like Russia in 1998. Consumers, companies and the government are all highly indebted. America as a result is a bankrupt Mickey Mouse economy," Wermuth told CNBC.

The comments followed news that the Fed was extending its quantitative easing program following what the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) described as a fall in the pace of growth in output and employment.

The Fed has spent the past three years on a route of aggressive rate cuts and purchases of trillions in various securities but it is running out of measures it can take, Pimco's co-CEO Mohamed El-Erian told CNBC.

Wermuth is a fund manager heavily invested in Russia and says if the same International Monetary Fund (IMF) team that managed the financial crisis in the former super power in 1998 now turned up at the US Treasury, they would withdraw support for current US policy immediately.

"The big evil for the IMF in Russia in 1998 was the prospect of the central bank funding government debt. The Fed is now even buying mortgage-backed securities," he noted.

"Even before the (Troubled Asset Relief Program) and the expansion of the Fed's balance sheet, total US public and private debt as a percentage of GDP in the US stood at 290 percent, that figure is now far higher," Wermuth added.

"US credit risk is huge and America has two options, either default or let the currency depreciate substantially against currencies such as the yuan and the rouble," he explained.

"Last night's news from the Fed simply creates the right conditions for dollar weakness and a reduction in US liabilities to foreign investors and governments," Wermuth said.

athos wrote on Aug 12^th, 2010 at 12:19pm:

There is a saying: Whatever you do comes back to you http://www.cnbc.com/id/38654017 America Is a 'Bankrupt Mickey Mouse Economy' CNBC Senior News Editor America is a "Mickey Mouse economy" that is technically bankrupt, according to Jochen Wermuth, the Chief Investment Officer (CIO) and managing partner at Wermuth Asset Management. "America today looks like Russia in 1998. Consumers, companies and the government are all highly indebted. America as a result is a bankrupt Mickey Mouse economy," Wermuth told CNBC. The comments followed news that the Fed was extending its quantitative easing program following what the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) described as a fall in the pace of growth in output and employment. The Fed has spent the past three years on a route of aggressive rate cuts and purchases of trillions in various securities but it is running out of measures it can take, Pimco's co-CEO Mohamed El-Erian told CNBC. Wermuth is a fund manager heavily invested in Russia and says if the same International Monetary Fund (IMF) team that managed the financial crisis in the former super power in 1998 now turned up at the US Treasury, they would withdraw support for current US policy immediately. "The big evil for the IMF in Russia in 1998 was the prospect of the central bank funding government debt. The Fed is now even buying mortgage-backed securities," he noted. "Even before the (Troubled Asset Relief Program) and the expansion of the Fed's balance sheet, total US public and private debt as a percentage of GDP in the US stood at 290 percent, that figure is now far higher," Wermuth added. "US credit risk is huge and America has two options, either default or let the currency depreciate substantially against currencies such as the yuan and the rouble," he explained. "Last night's news from the Fed simply creates the right conditions for dollar weakness and a reduction in US liabilities to foreign investors and governments," Wermuth said.

Yup, as I've been suggesting for ages: it is time for humanity to wake up and stop shuffling Mickey Mouse Monopoly Money and chasing our own tails, to feed the insatiable and destructive Growth Fairy!

equit - that's a pity.
We agree on something !!!!!!!


Quote:

Yup, as I've been suggesting for ages: it is time for humanity to wake up and stop shuffling Mickey Mouse Monopoly Money and chasing our own tails, to feed the insatiable and destructive Growth Fairy!

Sprintcyclist wrote on Aug 12^th, 2010 at 12:48pm:

equit - that's a pity. We agree on something !!!!!!! Quote: Yup, as I've been suggesting for ages: it is time for humanity to wake up and stop shuffling Mickey Mouse Monopoly Money and chasing our own tails, to feed the insatiable and destructive Growth Fairy!

LOL...suppose it had to happen sooner or later - and I'm certainly glad that it was on something as important as the gist of this! Now to find some common ground on the details, eh!?

::)

Quote:

suppose it had to happen sooner or later

- hahahahha



Quote:

Now to find some common ground on the details, eh!?

oh, that's pushing the envelope !!!!!!!!

how about, for too long US borrowed too much money
debt is too big.
that came from the US being too much to the left, politically.  ;)

Sprintcyclist wrote on Aug 12^th, 2010 at 12:56pm:

Quote: suppose it had to happen sooner or later - hahahahha [quote]Now to find some common ground on the details, eh!?

oh, that's pushing the envelope !!!!!!!!

how about, for too long US borrowed too much money
debt is too big.
that came from the US being too much to the left, politically.  ;)
[/quote]

You mean they owe too much to the Left, something like that.

http://michellesantos.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/us-debt1.jpg

I`ve been gazing in amazement at these consecutive, sensible posts!

:o

is it *already* bankrupt?! Of course it's already bankrupt, it's been bankrupt since before the global economic crisis, the crisis was just one among a number of end results. This has been all over the global internet news now for over two years - where do Australians usually have their heads?

Now, here's the lesson for Australia: America owes so much in deficits that it can never be paid back. Let me repeat - it can never be paid back, and it is getting worse every minute.
What do you suppose governments like to do in that situation - (hint: think Zimbabwe) - they actually print money - big time - so that they devalue the currency big time: then the debt isn't worth as much. Easy.
That's what they've been doing in America and England too for the last two years or more - they call it "quantitative easing" (another lefty b*sht jargon word), deliberately constructed so that *you* can't understand it.
All this extra money they print "inflates" the money supply and creates "inflation" (now there's a word we can understand). When inflation goes up, you might remember that places like the U.S. Fed and the Australian Reserve bank put up interest rates, and then people with big mortgages start losing their homes.
Interest rates go up because the money isn't worth what it used to be, because it is "inflated", and the banks still want their value back, so they increase the interest "price" of that money you borrowed.
And believe it or not, America has kept an artificial lid on their interest rates despite all this going on (it is like a lid on a pressure cooker, and it will blow sky high eventually). Then you will have hyperinflation, together with deflation, a deadly combination called stagflation.

Australia has followed the same route courtesy of the lefty laborites copying everything Barack Obama does, because they identify with him I suppose, and they don't have any other answers of their own.
We are lucky that we live in the country that we do, because our resources sector has cushioned us against all this, so we don't have as big a deficit as other places, like America and England - and we wouldn't have had any had you not voted labor in in 2007, because you thought John Howard was grumpy old man. Now you have a bunch of clueless numpties running the place and throwing our money away. When this dam breaks, every man and his dog will want to come to Australia.

We will need a very strong backbone to run this country from any time very soon to over the next number of years, because if you thought there had been a financial tsunami already, you ain't seen nothing yet.

Is America bankrupt - you better believe it.
The problem for Australians is that they're only just waking up to this now, years and years too late, and that includes the labor party, but when the s*ht hits the fan, which it will, they will be very quick to get up and start laying the blame at other people's feet.
Costello knew this was coming, and he said so.

Bottom line: the libs had a surplus, they were not bankrupt;
labor now has massive deficits at the very time in world history when that is the worst possible thing to be doing. They are lucky they haven't had enough time to make it worse, which they will if they get another term.

So I guess the moral of the local story in these times is:

*if you have a big mortgage, and you want to lose your home and go bankrupt in the process in the next three or four years, go ahead and vote labor."
It's already happened to millions of people in America, now they're lined up in their thousands for a handful of public housing, no where near enough to go round, and the country bankrupt and can't build more.

It can get a whole lot worse, folks, if you keep spending more than you earn, same for governments. They look like big spenders; you pay.

LOL...sadly and ironically, the colossal global debt is both a symptom and a toxin that ought never have been allowed to manifest...

The crux of the global crises of capitalism is really the exponential polarisation of income, wealth, resources, opportuntiy and power!

As Henry Ford famously observed: if bosses pay too little for labour, then the time comes when workers cannot buy goods (and services) from them...

The insatiable corporativist class staved off the inevitable crash for quite a while, selfishly maintaining profits by importing cheap labour and offshoring jobs and thereby keeping a lid on domestic wages - all the while fuelling wanton consumption by lending more and more money to the working and under classes...

In the process, the corporativists convinced pollies that the Growth Fairy was real and that regulation was an unnecessary hindrance to prosperity - and therefore they had been largely unfettered in creating gravely parasitic global Mickey Mouse Monopoly sub-industries in financial and insurance services...

These parasites created nothing, they added nothing, they just produced and traded worthless pieces of paper in the form of unfair contracts - and sold them off repeatedly (skimming a premium off the artificially-inflated value with each increasingly-risky transaction)...

This process stealthfully and effectively-enslaved the working classes, who were contractually enshackled to the corporativist parasites by being hocked to the eyeballs in consumer and mortgage debts...

All this simply accelerated the polarisation, to the point of inevitable socio-economic collapse...

Meanwhile, the corporativists enslaved and robbed entire nations of their rightful prosperity from finite natural resources - and recklessly cleared, mined and polluted vast tracts of land and waterways...

To this day, much of his madness still goes on unchallenged - and it is time that humanity woke up to itself...before we earn premature Darwin Awards en masse...

that's exactly the sort of communistic rhetoric that leads to words like "quantitative easing" and "let's print more money so people have more money in their hands". It is dangerous, cynical, stupid stuff. Ever since the Great Depression in 1930s, people and governments with these ideas have been increasingly gaining power and influence, (they're called Keynesians), especially like the Australian Labor Party - and what has the world come to now for all of that?
You cannot keep spending more than what you earn, that's a simple fact, someone has to pay the price when the music stops. Keynesians (labor people) think that that is nonsense, you can keep spending more than you earn, and they think it is a marvellous thing to do.
These are the sorts of cretins that you have running western countries now. They used to run communist countries as well, until they failed, but they're alive and well in western countries. They're called champagne socialists here.

When you say what I have said, in Australia this hits a very raw nerve with these people, and you get people like equitist scrambling to react, because she knows it is a critical challenge to the very basis on which she and people like her operate.
She is a brainwashed leftie.

If the US isn't already bankrupt, they are working on it.
Instigating wars in foreign lands lasting for very long periods whilst trying to install a democratic system in countries that never knew they needed it, doesn't come cheap you know.

What Equitist said.

I can only be flabbergasted at the web of lies that the uber-capitalists still try to spin. Can't they see who created the GFC?
It's probably fortunate that economies were already in freefall at the time of uber-right winged governments so that at least the history annals can tell the true story.
As per usual, the more left winged governments inherit the mess until greed becomes good again.

Wasting time, trading bits of paper (or pixels on a screen) in the name of artificial wealth the way of the uber-capitalists. They produce nothing of any worthwhile investment to a nation.
It's the hard work of the masses that produces a nation's wealth, and it's been proven time and time again that when this wealth is usurped by the greedy, the nation will suffer.

Did somebody actually say that the Labor party sniffs the bum of the U.S.?

Puhleease..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R9eZ8c1EDo

Amadd wrote on Aug 13^th, 2010 at 7:11am:

I can only be flabbergasted at the web of lies that the uber-capitalists still try to spin. Can't they see who created the GFC? It's probably fortunate that economies were already in freefall at the time of uber-right winged governments so that at least the history annals can tell the true story. As per usual, the more left winged governments inherit the mess until greed becomes good again. Wasting time, trading bits of paper (or pixels on a screen) in the name of artificial wealth the way of the uber-capitalists. They produce nothing of any worthwhile investment to a nation. It's the hard work of the masses that produces a nation's wealth, and it's been proven time and time again that when this wealth is usurped by the greedy, the nation will suffer. Did somebody actually say that the Labor party sniffs the bum of the U.S.? Puhleease..

Lest we forget......

That clip was an excellent reminder to us all Amadd, although I doubt any of the RW's want to recall the darkness hovering over this country during the Howard era.

The period under the coalition with its wars and extreme capitalism can't be forgiven or forgotten.

mantra wrote on Aug 13^th, 2010 at 7:46am:

Amadd wrote on Aug 13th, 2010 at 7:11am: I can only be flabbergasted at the web of lies that the uber-capitalists still try to spin. Can't they see who created the GFC? It's probably fortunate that economies were already in freefall at the time of uber-right winged governments so that at least the history annals can tell the true story. As per usual, the more left winged governments inherit the mess until greed becomes good again. Wasting time, trading bits of paper (or pixels on a screen) in the name of artificial wealth the way of the uber-capitalists. They produce nothing of any worthwhile investment to a nation. It's the hard work of the masses that produces a nation's wealth, and it's been proven time and time again that when this wealth is usurped by the greedy, the nation will suffer. Did somebody actually say that the Labor party sniffs the bum of the U.S.? Puhleease.. Lest we forget...... That clip was an excellent reminder to us all Amadd, although I doubt any of the RW's want to recall the darkness hovering over this country during the Howard era. The period under the coalition with its wars and extreme capitalism can't be forgiven or forgotten.

Can't forget that Australian families were better off back then either.

chicken_lipsforme wrote on Aug 13^th, 2010 at 8:14am:

Can't forget that Australian families were better off back then either.

LOL...that is what we were told but the stats on median incomes (as opposed to average full-time wages, which have become increasingly-skewed by those earning mega bucks)...

Fact is, the majority of Aussies were missing out - and rightfully feeling left behind in a period of record headline prosperity...

Hence, they gave the divisive, draconian and bigoted Howard and Co the boot in 2007!

Quote:

Lest we forget......

No we don't forget all of those things that we talked and debated about on "Cracker" do we Mantra?
The impending housing crisis, Keating's words of warning for overdriving an economy, the lack of investment in infrastructure, the selloff of public utilities, the folly of workchoices, the spending on illegal wars..etc.
It hardly compares to a stuff-up on insulation spending does it?

In Abbott's defense (sort of), he didn't seem too enthralled with Howard's words in that clip. Maybe Alan Pease (the body language expert) could decifer a bit of body language with the finger in the ear and the touching of the nose there. I've no idea what he'd make of tasting some earwax.

I doubt if we'd be getting anything near the misguided ruthlessness of Howard if Abbott were to pull it off, but the libs have shown that they will be subserviant to a dictator, and that's not what our political parties are supposed to be about.

Gillard always shows a very cool head, and I think that's reflected in the latest polls that this is what the people want.
The Labor party has traditionally kept itself at arms length to U.S. idealisms and we don't want to get any closer to their failures now.
We're doing OK with Labor. A cool head and the stabilising influence of an intelligent woman will be a good investment in our country's future.

Who would seriously want a Bush/Howard alliance governing our country now?i

chicken_lipsforme wrote on Aug 13^th, 2010 at 8:14am:

mantra wrote on Aug 13th, 2010 at 7:46am: Amadd wrote on Aug 13th, 2010 at 7:11am: I can only be flabbergasted at the web of lies that the uber-capitalists still try to spin. Can't they see who created the GFC? It's probably fortunate that economies were already in freefall at the time of uber-right winged governments so that at least the history annals can tell the true story. As per usual, the more left winged governments inherit the mess until greed becomes good again. Wasting time, trading bits of paper (or pixels on a screen) in the name of artificial wealth the way of the uber-capitalists. They produce nothing of any worthwhile investment to a nation. It's the hard work of the masses that produces a nation's wealth, and it's been proven time and time again that when this wealth is usurped by the greedy, the nation will suffer. Did somebody actually say that the Labor party sniffs the bum of the U.S.? Puhleease.. Lest we forget...... That clip was an excellent reminder to us all Amadd, although I doubt any of the RW's want to recall the darkness hovering over this country during the Howard era. The period under the coalition with its wars and extreme capitalism can't be forgiven or forgotten. Can't forget that Australian families were better off back then either.

How can you forget something that never was?

athos wrote on Aug 12^th, 2010 at 2:50pm:

Sprintcyclist wrote on Aug 12th, 2010 at 12:56pm: Quote: suppose it had to happen sooner or later - hahahahha [quote]Now to find some common ground on the details, eh!? oh, that's pushing the envelope !!!!!!!! how about, for too long US borrowed too much money debt is too big. that came from the US being too much to the left, politically.  ;)

You mean they owe too much to the Left, something like that.

http://michellesantos.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/us-debt1.jpg[/quote]

Easy, don't pay it back. The US and the West have gotten themselves into this stupid position because the greed of capitalism...I mean seriously..how stupid to invest in and industrialise your enemy unless you are then going to rip them back off.

Love to see the Chinese government and Chinese capitalism get screwed.

The Corporate West leaders should all then be strung up in the streets.

Quote:

How can you forget something that never was?

Hello?
Was there a bad batch of acid goin' 'round just a few years ago?

Amadd wrote on Aug 13^th, 2010 at 10:16am:

Quote: How can you forget something that never was? Hello? Was there a bad batch of acid goin' 'round just a few years ago?

Must have been, considering that wages have stayed stagnant for so long whilst the cost of living has been rising all that time, I fail to see how anyone could have missed that.

locutius wrote on Aug 13^th, 2010 at 9:25am:

chicken_lipsforme wrote on Aug 13th, 2010 at 8:14am: mantra wrote on Aug 13th, 2010 at 7:46am: Amadd wrote on Aug 13th, 2010 at 7:11am: I can only be flabbergasted at the web of lies that the uber-capitalists still try to spin. Can't they see who created the GFC? It's probably fortunate that economies were already in freefall at the time of uber-right winged governments so that at least the history annals can tell the true story. As per usual, the more left winged governments inherit the mess until greed becomes good again. Wasting time, trading bits of paper (or pixels on a screen) in the name of artificial wealth the way of the uber-capitalists. They produce nothing of any worthwhile investment to a nation. It's the hard work of the masses that produces a nation's wealth, and it's been proven time and time again that when this wealth is usurped by the greedy, the nation will suffer. Did somebody actually say that the Labor party sniffs the bum of the U.S.? Puhleease.. Lest we forget...... That clip was an excellent reminder to us all Amadd, although I doubt any of the RW's want to recall the darkness hovering over this country during the Howard era. The period under the coalition with its wars and extreme capitalism can't be forgiven or forgotten. Can't forget that Australian families were better off back then either. How can you forget something that never was?

Does that make it clearer about what I was referring to?

Thankyou  :D

shampain socialist wrote on Aug 12^th, 2010 at 3:10pm:

is it *already* bankrupt?! Of course it's already bankrupt, it's been bankrupt since before the global economic crisis, the crisis was just one among a number of end results. This has been all over the global internet news now for over two years - where do Australians usually have their heads? Now, here's the lesson for Australia: America owes so much in deficits that it can never be paid back. Let me repeat - it can never be paid back, and it is getting worse every minute. What do you suppose governments like to do in that situation - (hint: think Zimbabwe) - they actually print money - big time - so that they devalue the currency big time: then the debt isn't worth as much. Easy. That's what they've been doing in America and England too for the last two years or more - they call it "quantitative easing" (another lefty b*sht jargon word), deliberately constructed so that *you* can't understand it. All this extra money they print "inflates" the money supply and creates "inflation" (now there's a word we can understand). When inflation goes up, you might remember that places like the U.S. Fed and the Australian Reserve bank put up interest rates, and then people with big mortgages start losing their homes. Interest rates go up because the money isn't worth what it used to be, because it is "inflated", and the banks still want their value back, so they increase the interest "price" of that money you borrowed. And believe it or not, America has kept an artificial lid on their interest rates despite all this going on (it is like a lid on a pressure cooker, and it will blow sky high eventually). Then you will have hyperinflation, together with deflation, a deadly combination called stagflation. Australia has followed the same route courtesy of the lefty laborites copying everything Barack Obama does, because they identify with him I suppose, and they don't have any other answers of their own. We are lucky that we live in the country that we do, because our resources sector has cushioned us against all this, so we don't have as big a deficit as other places, like America and England - and we wouldn't have had any had you not voted labor in in 2007, because you thought John Howard was grumpy old man. Now you have a bunch of clueless numpties running the place and throwing our money away. When this dam breaks, every man and his dog will want to come to Australia. We will need a very strong backbone to run this country from any time very soon to over the next number of years, because if you thought there had been a financial tsunami already, you ain't seen nothing yet. Is America bankrupt - you better believe it. The problem for Australians is that they're only just waking up to this now, years and years too late, and that includes the labor party, but when the s*ht hits the fan, which it will, they will be very quick to get up and start laying the blame at other people's feet. Costello knew this was coming, and he said so. Bottom line: the libs had a surplus, they were not bankrupt; labor now has massive deficits at the very time in world history when that is the worst possible thing to be doing. They are lucky they haven't had enough time to make it worse, which they will if they get another term. So I guess the moral of the local story in these times is: *if you have a big mortgage, and you want to lose your home and go bankrupt in the process in the next three or four years, go ahead and vote labor." It's already happened to millions of people in America, now they're lined up in their thousands for a handful of public housing, no where near enough to go round, and the country bankrupt and can't build more. It can get a whole lot worse, folks, if you keep spending more than you earn, same for governments. They look like big spenders; you pay.

You are so deadly right.
Even bigger worry is, that today, they are in charge of almost everything.
They carry more political authority than the governments.
Out of hundred dominant economical units, in the world today, 49 are countries' and 51 corporations'.
It means that they actually lead the world, dictate politics and our every day lives.
The problem is that they are not interested to answer any common sense moral questions that concerns people today.
Just have a look what's happened when mining tax was
proposed in Australia
What is the point of having jobs that poisons environment and people. When they poison everything, are people going to drink and eat money?.
And this myth about skilled migrants is a biog bull s h i t, they don't need skill migrants they need sheep labor.
There is already enough unemployed skill labor in Australia but they don't want them they want cheeper slaves.

mantra wrote on Aug 13^th, 2010 at 7:46am:

Amadd wrote on Aug 13th, 2010 at 7:11am: I can only be flabbergasted at the web of lies that the uber-capitalists still try to spin. Can't they see who created the GFC? It's probably fortunate that economies were already in freefall at the time of uber-right winged governments so that at least the history annals can tell the true story. As per usual, the more left winged governments inherit the mess until greed becomes good again. Wasting time, trading bits of paper (or pixels on a screen) in the name of artificial wealth the way of the uber-capitalists. They produce nothing of any worthwhile investment to a nation. It's the hard work of the masses that produces a nation's wealth, and it's been proven time and time again that when this wealth is usurped by the greedy, the nation will suffer. Did somebody actually say that the Labor party sniffs the bum of the U.S.? Puhleease.. Lest we forget...... That clip was an excellent reminder to us all Amadd, although I doubt any of the RW's want to recall the darkness hovering over this country during the Howard era. The period under the coalition with its wars and extreme capitalism can't be forgiven or forgotten.

So true Mantra, just to add: And endless poisoning of the environment

Our environment is still being poisoned Athos and although I was hopeful at first that a Greens/ALP might improve that situation, I'm kidding myself.

There is little difference in either major party and they are still controlled by US interests to our detriment.

No leader will ever be quite as bad as Howard I'm hoping in our lifetime, but the agendas of both parties are still the same. I'd like to think that Gillard would make a big difference to this country, but she is still limited to doing what she's told.

Our PM's are only administrators - nothing else. We will always be the lackeys of Washington.

mantra, it is not the U.S. or Washington poisoning our environment. It is Australians and Australian industry. What the consumers don't have is *choice* - if you want to, for example, drive a car that has a lighter environmental footprint, until recently you didn't have a *choice*. Hydrogen cars are the best, but - can you buy them? Of course not.
There is nothing stopping Australian industry from developing this technology, as well as affordable super efficient solar cells. But they don't. They want to keep digging up the coal, and the irony is that the tax revenue from those rivers of "black gold" is what keeps this country from sinking like the rest of them did. It's an internal dilemma, but one born out of luckily having all these natural resources. You will see within a few years how desperate things can get when Australia runs out of oil for petrol. Petrol could end up $5.00 a litre. No problem.

Mantra, Howard was not an evil person. He is a good man, he is an older fashioned type of Australian though, and to write someone off like that just because your generation does not think like that, is writing off your Australian grandparents and great grandparents. Howard definitely was of an earlier Australian generation, but he is a good Australian, and a good man.
Remember not to judge people just because of your political perspectives, or just because they are "older than you". You will be old one day, and the younger people are going to think you are a complete waste of space probably. Australians tend to think like that about older people, it is a national trait, which other countries and cultures abhor about us.
Think about it. You are on this forum for a start, and you are thinking about it, so learn from other perspectives as well.
Cheers.

shampain socialist wrote on Aug 14^th, 2010 at 12:25pm:

mantra, it is not the U.S. or Washington poisoning our environment. It is Australians and Australian industry. What the consumers don't have is *choice* - if you want to, for example, drive a car that has a lighter environmental footprint, until recently you didn't have a *choice*. Hydrogen cars are the best, but - can you buy them? Of course not. There is nothing stopping Australian industry from developing this technology, as well as affordable super efficient solar cells. But they don't. They want to keep digging up the coal, and the irony is that the tax revenue from those rivers of "black gold" is what keeps this country from sinking like the rest of them did. It's an internal dilemma, but one born out of luckily having all these natural resources. You will see within a few years how desperate things can get when Australia runs out of oil for petrol. Petrol could end up $5.00 a litre. No problem. Mantra, Howard was not an evil person. He is a good man, he is an older fashioned type of Australian though, and to write someone off like that just because your generation does not think like that, is writing off your Australian grandparents and great grandparents. Howard definitely was of an earlier Australian generation, but he is a good Australian, and a good man. Remember not to judge people just because of your political perspectives, or just because they are "older than you". You will be old one day, and the younger people are going to think you are a complete waste of space probably. Australians tend to think like that about older people, it is a national trait, which other countries and cultures abhor about us. Think about it. You are on this forum for a start, and you are thinking about it, so learn from other perspectives as well. Cheers.

I don't remember, Was he a British or American?

Australian. There's a big difference.
And being Australian doesn't mean that you're a lefty commy aussie, or a "greedy capitalist" either.
It means being Australian.

shampain socialist wrote on Aug 14^th, 2010 at 1:01pm:

Australian. There's a big difference. And being Australian doesn't mean that you're a lefty commy aussie, or a "greedy capitalist" either. It means being Australian.

Hm, I’ve heard some people saying that he was Bushes clone (clown)