Norway is tucking away its profit from oil exports into a Future Fund. Unlike Australia, it doesn't seem to have its own Goverment undermining its resource income by wanting to close down them own. The Norwegian Fund has purchased sections of the Champs Elysee and Regent St. London as part of their property portfolio. They earn hundreds of millions a year in rent alone.

Remember Howard initiated a future fund which was subsequently raided by the Labor Party.Where are our profits going? To hair brained Labor schemes which end up in waste. Its a crime.

Why can't we be like Norway? There are too many fingers in the pie and the people are left with little in the end.

RStuart, if you would be so kind, could you please point me to the other economist that opposes the SWF for now. However, if it is Andrew Leigh, nevermind, I have read that article.

My apologies to other participants but my message that follows is particularly for Saul.

Saul, if your "mining boom in full swing" is predicated upon a trade surplus leading to a Current Account surplus I am in full agreement. However that would make it like Chile and Norway. Any other type of SWF is nothing but accounting trickery. As long as we're talking AUD it is impossible to have unfunded liabilities in our free floating fiat currency. I offer these links as support http://bit.ly/oUhsov and http://bit.ly/oPoAyB to the CA surplus idea.

More smoke amd mirrors from the likes of Saul.While we let the Central Banking systems of our planet create in their computers debt to equal the increases in our productivity,then we will be no better than the serfs of the Middle Ages.

The basic question Saul Eastlake is; Who should own the increases in productivity via the toil of all Australians? No one seems to make the connection between increases in productivity and the need to increase the money supply.Those who create the money from nothing to equal our productivity own it,then have the audacity to loan it back to us as debt.

The US Constitution said that only Congress should have the power to create new money to equal the people's increase in productivity,but alas private bankers now utter currency at the stroke of a computer key to equal what is not theirs.

We would not need to flog off our resources and energy to China so cheaply if we owned our productivity.Have you reflected upon this reality Saul?

'Skeptic', you're a gutless wonder who can't do anything but hurl personal abuse from behind the pusillanimous veil of anonymity. And "Arjay", another who lacks the intestinal fortitude to give his real name, for some reason thinks I'm related to Darryl (Memo, "arjay", whoever you are, the surname is 'Eslake', not 'Eastlake'). No-one "owns" productivity, any more than anyone "owns" temperature. The dividends from greater levels of productivity, or the losses arising from lower levels of productivity, are distributed according to the interaction of 'market forces' and government interventions.

'Sennexx', I respect where you're coming from (although I'd have even more respect if you wrote under your real name), and I readily acknowledge that what I am proposing for Australia is quite different from the 'sovereign' wealth funds that exist in Norway, Chile and most oil-producing nations. It wouldn't be funded out of a current account surplus, since the probability of us running one is probably smaller than that of 'Arjay' discovering some issue to which the answer isn't a "government-owned bank".

Rather, my advocacy of some kind of 'sovereign' wealth fund (or 'stabilization fund', which is the phrase that's been used by the OECD and Glenn Stevens, and which I think better captures what I am trying to say) is motivated by a desire to prevent whoever is in government in the second half of the decade from squandering whatever revenue comes its way as a result of the mining boom, in the same way that the Howard Government did in 2004-07, putting more upward pressure on demand, inflation and interest rates, and exacerbating the division between the resources and related sectors of the economy and the rest.

Saul,Ross is my real name and it is about time you and other economists faced the reality of a GFC created by a Global Central Banking scam as being an abomination of all humanity.

The game of counterfeiting our money via the fractional reserve system of banking will soon be finished.Just look at Greece.The Central Banks created money from nothing and then put Greece into debt from which they cannot escape.

Why are the real names more revelant than the truth which seems to be your mantra? Due to my political activity I've had the two visits from our AFP who have tried to intimidate me into submission.So there is some method in my madness.