In the early stages of what would become the pandemic, Trump along with most other leaders on the planet accepted the lies told by China and the misinformation sold by WHO and therefore downplayed the potential problems that were headed our way.

According to SR, the heroic left media challenged Trump's view.

SR spends his life rewriting history to match his fantasies.

In fact the 'heroic' left press' only challenge to Trump in those early stages was that he was going too far. When he implemented the travel ban on China, the 'heroic' left press screamed that he was being racist. The heroic left media supported all those who downplayed the problem. Only now, when the full problem is clear do the 'heroic' left press demand that Trump should have gone harder, faster.

Unfortunately for those who want to re-write history, the internet is forever. You can only memory-hole so much stuff.

Dear Chris Lewis,

Yes it is interesting isn't it. As I posted Trump can say things like "we have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine." even though he now says he knew it was going to be a pandemic all along and that "People are really surprised I understand this stuff".

The author of this piece is rightly saying of the Chinese government;

"They've since tried to convince the word that they have things under control, as part of a growing propaganda war with global trade as the stakes."

But this is exactly what Trump, Boris and Morrison tried to do. The more authoritarian the regime the more this goes on. The only difference is the free press which is now under attack by so many of the sycophants and it is happening here. "Only the morons at the woke Sydney Morning Herald could be so gullible".

One of these days SR will accidentally inject a smidgen of truth & even fact into one of his posts & the shock will take our breath away even more than the coronavirus.

I find it hard to believe that even Chris Lewis is so naive that he actually believes the ABC has produced anything like news in the last couple of decades. It must be the complete lefty spin they put on everything that has addled his brain that has him believing such rubbish.

Hasbeen, you can think what you want.

What I said is that both the ABC and Sky(especially after 6pm) are both biased, but that the ABC would do better than SKY if both had to rely on advertising 100%.

It is my opinion, and will never be tested because one relies on the govt and the other is supported by Foxtel's owners.

As for fair dinkum debate about Aust's future, i have never seen much worth remembering from either network. lets face it, Aust's elite have succumbed to the money of China for years.

I would rather read OLO, and a variety of sites around the world to help shape my thought process.

I rely on ABC for the news, bu i research stuff around the world to help inform my mind as best i can.

I mean as if Sky or the ABC would tell u this.

"In an economy built on debt, this is a painful but necessary move from the government. Debt needs to be serviced. If it’s not, the asset (which is financed by the debt) loses value. If assets lose value it threatens the solvency of the banking system.

Who are our creditors?

Mostly foreigners. For years we have consumed more than we produced as a nation. As a result, we are a ‘net debtor’ nation. That means we must borrow from the rest of the world to finance our standard of living.

Anyway, decades of excess consumption mean we don’t have the required pool of domestic savings to support our standard of living. So we borrow from foreigners.

That’s why our net foreign debt is $1.143 trillion, as at December 2019.

Over the years, we’ve had to borrow a lot from offshore. As mentioned above, our cumulative (net) borrowing from foreigners is now over a trillion dollars. Servicing that debt is expensive. It requires income. In the December quarter the bill was about $12.5 billion. Annualised, that’s a $50 billion income bill to service our foreign loans.

So when the economy collapses and income evaporates, our foreign creditors are going to get very nervous about rolling over our loans. The risk/reward equation just skewed to lots of risk for not much reward.

This is why Morrison knows he can’t afford to shut the economy down completely. If foreigners stop lending to us, we would be looking at a depression, not a recession.

And a depression would kill far more people than COVID-19. Did you know that suicide in Australia already accounts for around 3,000 deaths a year? Imagine what a depression would do to that number?

So the government is absolutely right to try to get the balance right between stopping the spread of the virus and saving lives and livelihoods by avoiding economic Armageddon".

Before this crisis we were exporting more than we were importing.
Aidan,
On the books yes, in reality ? What were the most manufactured commodities made here ?
I'm not trying to be sarcastic but I'm wondering what these exports could be apart from what's being dug up ?