Woah there nelly! Way to put words in someone's mouth! You really think Rudd meant all that from that one little statement?

And maybe julie's own IPA could take a bit of responsibility of the market price drop after the carbon tax announcement. After all, it was organizations like hers, together with news ltd and the coalition, who were spreading disinformation and scaremongering spin about the tax and climate change.

And last I looked, the stimulus package worked. We avoided recession and have the 3rd lowest public debt as % of GDP in the OECD. As well as enviably low unemployment.

Budget surplus vs recession? it's a no-brainer, a lesson learned from the old orthodox thinking Julie is espousing which exaserbated the severity of the Great Depression. Julie either deliberately ignores this to put her spin on this, or has no basic economic understanding herself.

" After all, it was organizations like hers, together with news ltd and the coalition, who were spreading disinformation and scaremongering spin about the tax and climate change. "

So everyone else in the world was so stupid they thought that taxing every aspect of production adversely affects capital values?

"And last I looked, the stimulus package worked."

This is from the Keynesian "printing money makes us all rich" school of thought. So the pink batts fiasco, and the BER boondoggle actually made us economically better off? This is wonderful news. Why don't blow up a few big cities? - that should really make us wealthy.

Trashcanman exhibits the looking-through-the-wrong-end-of-the-telescope theory of economics - government as the horn of plenty. This ignores the fundamental fact that everything the coercive sector spends, it first gets by confiscating it from the productive sector.

You can't get over it can you. Even as those people who routed the system are put on trial, and money recovered. This doesn't count, you only see what you want to. Just more rhetoric from the coalition of can't be informed.

High dollar, low inflation. I don't think printing money is relevant, Peter.
Most of the stimulus package was funded by issuing bonds, not printing money.

And lo and behold, Aussie dollar jumped above parity again after the carbon tax passed through the lower house. Seems investors don't share your dire predictions for the economy.

"It shows that Kevin Rudd hasn't learned the basic economic lesson that economic growth, be it at a national or global level, can only be led from the front by a private sector unencumbered by the unsustainable debts, uncompetitive tax regimes and onerous regulations of big governments."

Well how about this Julie, economic growth, be it at a national or global level cannot be sustained on a finite resourced planet. We are at the limits to growth, the evidence is everywhere.

You cannot sustain economic growth, no matter what, without cheap energy.

It does not matter what Rudd, Gillard, Swan, Abbott or any other politician spruiks, global growth is over, too much debt, too much damage to the environment, too many people, unsustainable energy use, the list is endless.

Perhaps your esteemed 'think tank' could do some serious and unbiased research on the links between energy and the economy.

Until you and people who support your starry ideals realise we cannot keep growing, whether its people, GDP, energy, pollution, environmental degradation etc, current problems will only grow and continue to get worse.

Wait till China hits the wall, its in the process of doing this as we speak, then you will really see a drop in the markets, scratch your heads and wonder how did that happen. Get real.

Thank you for your contribution Julie .

The bit I don't understand is why you had to write it ?

The malaise we are all in is called Debt ie We are Broke .

Stupidity navigated us to where we are .

I particularly see red lights when the Economics Pundit insists that selling Bonds "is not" Borrowing money ?
So where did the money come from ?
The answer could be the Bondee dumped his Qantas Shares ,BHP shares etc.
So now that money is out of circulation buried in a vortex of Debt where it will never earn a buck.

We can't do without Carbon and we sure would be better off without Debt as we are now finding out.