An excellent piece. The Liberal Democratic Party in its press releases has been trying to highlight the fundamental flaws in throwing (taxpayers) money at the "problem". Australians will soon be asking for more money to be thrown at them! Unemployment still increasing, so the taxpayer base is declining. Where will the extra money come from? Maybe a new Rudd tax on resources? Maybe a Carbon Tax? Maybe an Oxygen Tax?

Peter Whelan has a lot in common with Ron Paul the Congressman for Texas USA.I agree.We need to get back to individual reponsibility.Today we have a strange mix of Corporate/Govt projects which are costing the tax payer even more in terms of money but also the loss of individual freedoms.

We should not be selling off our Govt income earning assets.If China in the form of Chinalco and Singapore Govt's OPTUS can run efficient businesses why can't we in Australia do it? Why do we have tolled roads,no infrastructure and increasing debt when China in the depths of poverty with a Communist Govt and corruption can excel?

The real big lie is that we need to go into more debt to fund infrastructure.The global Reserve banks create most of their money in a computer.The IMF proudly announced 1.4 trillion in cyber money.They have no gold reserves to back it.They do not borrow it.Why borrow from this corrupt system when you can create your own credit and still keep inflation under control internally via interest rates.There is no need to borrow from other countries.Every country on this planet can fund their own needs and still have a stable currency.The credit ratings of the likes of Moodies mean nothing.They gave Fanny Mae amd Freddy Mac a AAA rating.What a lie!

Stop the press a Libertarian doesn't like big Government.....
The biggest problem with this idea is that it's not something that could ever be tried out. No Polly would ever sign up for it, when you’re not in Government you can spout of any old dogma. Can they Author name a single Country that hasn't done something along the same lines as Rudd’s. Your fooling yourself if our electorate would allow a Polly to step back and let the companies fail let interests rate go where they may. As decoupled as they are now any move in interest rates is blamed on the Government as if they actual set it.
A Libertarian Government is a foreign land where no one has ever been, and Libertarians like to pretend they know what the grass smells like.

Any Government that can blow such an enormous surplus in such a short period of time shows it is not only inexperienced but also incompetent. Unfortunately every time Labour gets in we spend decades paying for their uncontrollable spending. It is sad though that our children and grandchildren will be paying for this incompetence. Mr Howard managed to pay for many troops to bring freedom to Iraq and yet he still delivers in the black. Shows the intelligence of the average voter.

I have yet to see anyone, Labour, Liberal, communist or anarchist, describe a credible alternative strategy to the one adopted by governments across the globe in the face of the near-meltdown of global finance.

It would have taken an overzealously idealist government to harden its heart to the devastation that such a collapse would have caused. I doubt that many people would have applauded a policy that simply allowed us to slide into a recession, that could easily turn into a depression as economies around the world contracted.

Which it could easily have done. Viciously.

No-one with half a brain believes that these measures were taken to court popularity. They were designed to avert an immediate disaster that would have caused considerable pain, by accepting a degree of discomfort down the track.

It won't all be pleasant, of course it won't. There will still be a degree of disruption, in both standard-of-living and in unemployment.

But realistically, we are collectively experiencing the hangover of our (that's you and me) consuming too much credit, in the belief that the boomtimes would go on indefinitely. To pretend that the problems were caused by delinquent government policy is about as fatuous as pretending there was some magic bullet that would have enabled us to avoid it.

So instead of simply whinging, Mr Humphreys, take a stab at proposing realistic alternatives, so that we can compare them to the actions that you think so little of.

I also note that the paper you lifted most of your copy from - Robert Carling's "Are we all Keynsians again" - was itself long on points-scoring, but silent on the topic of a better way of handling the situation.

If you want to know the truth and reality see Jim Rogers "Going mad on Bloomberg.."http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTQ4zVWt1wQ

Japan has been doing exactly what we are doing now in a more diluted form for 15yrs for no result.What do you think the outcome will be?