It was an Act of God that Socialist Shorty and the internecine Greenies did not get in and totally destroy Australia.



Meanwhile, back in the kingdom of Turnbullia…
AMM 10/10/2016

The term “late bloomer” might be the situation with the Wentworth Waffler’s more than a year of “innovation” in “Australia, a great place to be”, but the bean counters at Standard & Poor’s, the ones that hand out AAA financial ratings, don’t agree with Mal’s cliches.

Australia’s foreign debt has hit “extreme” levels that match the worst in the world, according to a startling warning from ratings agency Standard & Poor’s that will intensify the dispute over budget repair after years of political deadlock on major savings. The global S&P executive who signs off on Australia’s ­credit rating has rung the alarm over the nation’s debt, suggesting the Turnbull government will need to find substantial new savings to avoid losing its ­coveted AAA rating.

Source: News Corp
Australia’s foreign debt levels rated ‘extreme’ by Standard & Poor’s

As federal parliament ­resumes today to debate key budget bills this week, the ratings agency’s outlook ramps up the pressure on all sides of politics to avert a credit downgrade that would increase lending costs across the economy.

John Chambers, the chairman of the firm’s sovereign ­ratings committee, suggested the federal government risked losing the AAA rating if it continued to miss its fiscal targets.

“The government will point out that its fiscal position is strong — but it’s not quite as strong as it used to be,” Mr Chambers told The Australian, just days after he heard Scott Morrison emphasise Australia’s economic strength at a gathering in New York.
“And you don’t want to have your fiscal situation adding fuel to the fire on the external side.

“Australia would have one of the weakest external positions of the 130 sovereigns that we rate.”
The nation’s net foreign debt liabilities rose from $976 billion to $1.045 trillion over the 12 months to June — including federal, state and private sector borrowings — while net foreign equity fell from $70.1bn to $8.6bn over the same period, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
The comments are a sign of deepening concern about Australia’s economic fortunes after similar warnings from Fitch Ratings and Moody’s Investor Ser­vices at a time when economic leaders are urging stronger ­action to head off a crisis.
Former Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens said the ­nation faced a “moment of crisis” if it did not act as soon as possible to reduce budget deficits, while former Treasury secretary Ken Henry said the “appeals to populism” in Canberra were undermining responsible fiscal policy.
Mr Chambers made it clear a downgrade to Australia’s credit rating was an option in the wake of S&P’s decision in July to put Australia on “negative outlook” in part because of concerns that the new Senate would make budget ­repair hard to achieve. “You’ve already hit an extreme measure of (foreign liabilities) so in terms of a trigger (for a downgrade), it would be more on the fiscal side,” he said.

Mr Chambers said the rapid ­increase in Australian house ­prices and property investment was similar, though not as ­pronounced as the surge in unproductive property investment in Spain more than a decade ago, ­before that nation’s credit ­troubles.
“For Spain to have patted itself on the back before the crisis is a ­little bit missing the point,” he said, noting that Spain’s public debt surged from about zero to 80 per cent of economic output in the wake of the global financial crisis.

Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten return to parliament today with no sign of common ground on savings, as Labor holds out against unlegislated savings worth about $8bn over four years and more than $30bn over the decade ahead under forecasts from the Parliamentary Budget Office. Finance Minister Mathias Cormann stuck to the government’s plans yesterday despite Labor calls for an end to “zombie measures” that appear unlikely to be passed through a Senate where Labor, the Greens and the crossbenchers can join forces to veto any bill.

“If you look at what has happened over the last two or three years, a whole series of savings measures that Labor initially ­opposed — and opposed for quite an extended period of time — (Labor) eventually ended up supporting and voting in favour of,” Senator Cormann said.
He defended the Coalition’s record on annual government payments, which have swelled from $406bn to $445bn since the 2013 election, by insisting the outlays would fall as a proportion of gross domestic product.

“We have been able to stabilise spending as a share of GDP,” he told Sky News. “Over the forward estimates, we are projected to bring spending as a share of GDP down to 25.2 per cent.”
Yet the government has missed its targets in the past, with its first budget holding out the prospect of driving spending down to 24.7 per cent of GDP in 2016-17 while the most recent budget showed it would be 25.8 per cent instead. The change was largely the result of lower economic growth than expected.

Read rest of financial chaos caused by Labor here

juliar wrote on Oct 10^th, 2016 at 10:03am:





except that the debt is higher than it was 3 years ago .

John Smith wrote on Oct 10^th, 2016 at 12:17pm:


Much much much much higher , hence why they slipped out the numbers in the dead of night , economic messiahs 

juliar wrote on Oct 10^th, 2016 at 1:03pm:



yes , we know

Liberal debt = good
labor debt   = bad

Most of Labor's spending was once off stimulus not ongoing expenditure....The big ticket items like Gonski and the NDIS have not been implemented yet and will not be under this Government....Almost every measure being criticised for being unsustainable where introduced by the Howard Government....Just sayin!!!

Oh, do shut up, fool.

This is absolute nonsense. The foreign debt of Australia has nearly doubled in the seven years since Labor was last in government and was accelerating sharply in 2015.