During the Howard-Costello years when general farm and real-estate values jumped up three-fold or more while grain prices stayed the same, us old stagers grizzled that the jump was too good to be true.

Certainly it would do us the world of good to find out what really caused it?

Maybe we need another Maynard Keynes to supply the answer?

Here's Hoping, BB, WA.

Yes, the last thing we need is a copy of kRudd from our opposition leader.

After all, a copy of a copy is always a mess, & kRudd is nothing if not a poor copy of Haward, to start with.

It is most unfortunate we have a couple of apprentices running the US, & Oz, right when we really needed capable hands at the wheel.

Am I the only one to notice a change in Swan? He has sounded like the ventriloquists' dummy, ever since he was given a job five times above the level of his competence. Perhaps it's his new, better fitting suit, but it appears to me, that he is now starting to look like one, as well.

When the first cash handouts came out before Xmas, I thought that this seemed to be a very simplistic and populist move by the Govt. Surely investing in things like much needed infrastructure - I'm from Sydney and it is grinding to a halt - would be a more obvious way of keeping the economy moving when all of these demonic external forces are bearing down.
However the IMF openly applauded the Govts initiative and fast thinking and attributed this action as directly cushioning the impact in Australia that was felt around the world. The IMF are a pretty conservative bunch and it was certainly a telling comment.
These times are so unknown and uncharted and I think that the govt has to take the lead, has to accept debt as not a dirty word and get on with achieving real things. It is a time to internalise and rebuild.
And to imply that Howard was a builder of our nations wealth should not be uttered without the fact that he privatised everything he could get his hands on, let the hospital and education systems be starved of funding by leaving them in state hands and then denying states an adequate tax base from which to draw.
Cheers

c'mon lets get real anyone can look good during a mining boom. Peel away the gloss and look what happened during the Howard-Costello years.

They took away federal funds from the vital transport infrastructure and said it was a state responsibility to do what?

Pay off debt early? The failure to invest in water, telecommunications, transport means one thing reduced productivity.

Debt for investment represent an intergenerational transfer of cost which is only fair because there is an intergenerational transfer of benefit.

The nostalgia of some will be overshadowed by the despair of opportunities lost.

The Rip Van Winkle years will be a greater description.

No argument from me about the silliness of some of the Rudd gestures, although as already stated the IMF seems to have endorsed the Father Xmas approach. My beef is with your alternative vision - I think you'd better go back to hedge funds if you think the Howard-Costello years were halcyon ones for the country. They did nothing for 11 years but collect mineral resources boom taxes and waste most of it on politically expedient tax cuts, mostly favouring the hedge end of town. Costello is a fool, considered by most in his own party to be lazy and weak. He knows nothing, NOTHING, about economics, and was lucky to be around for the long boom for which he and Howard can claim no credit, and during which they failed to invest in anything of real purpose; they chose instead to plan tax cuts and increase middle class welfare, blowing up the bubble while they were at it.

The company I work for has just gone into voluntary receivership, so I for one am quite happy to receive a handout.
Any chance of another one next month?
With the median wage still hovering around 35k, and normal expenses for an average 'battler' family around 40k -not including debt- I'm just a little sick of hearing about the Howard 'boom' years.
All Howard/Costello did was fund the egregious gap between rich and poor. In fairness, they were merely continuing the great work of Hawke/Keating in this area.
Apparently, even in a so called 'boom' period the working poor in this country are supposed to be grateful just to have a job, even if the job doesn't allow them to support a family.
A plague on both their houses.