Unfortunately there is no 'courage' or 'imagination' to be seen in the current Government. And, there is nothing to say that the previous Government would have shown any courage or imagination if it had been in the same position.

Governments of all colours are interested only in their own fortunes; and when they are caught with their pants down, as the current one has been, we all suffer.

I'm looking forward to the day when politicians can be sacked by the people at any time during their terms of office if they do not perform.

Polititicians, not workers, are the ones who should be losing their jobs now.

On the contrary, Leigh. The politicians should be working for the first time in their lives right now. They're the ones who should be bowing, scraping and busting their backs to feed the parasite-oligarch financiers who caused this colossal disaster. They're their mates after all. Like Bob Carr and his bosses at Macquarie, or Turnbull and his mobster bosses at Goldman Sachs, Costello and the World Bank, etc. Corrupt scum the lot of them.

But no, they want workers to now just feed even more into a yet greater scam yoking the economy tighter to the financiers' monetarist cancer!

And Levien, don't push that old rubbish about Keynes (this time claiming he got us out of the Depression!). If we'd relied on Keynes Mussolini and Hitler would have won by 1943 at the latest. Forget Lend-Lease for starters. After all, Keynes' theories were - even by his own admission - most compatible with one of his greatest fascist admirers i.e., Hjalmar Schacht, the mastermind behind Hitler's rise.

Like most articles of its type this one proposes a range of "solutions" to problems that may well make the problems worse - or perhaps create a whole new set of problems. First off, the crisis did not originate in Australia. It came from America and Europe, therefore regulating the markets here to fix a problem that occured somewhere else would not seem appropriate.

Regulating banks ect to better stimulate the economy.. All this sounds attractive but the problem is that, as both sides of politics have found to their cost, regulating or madating to achieve some end in the economy - create more hard industry, ect - often cost billions to no result, and may have unintended effects. Tax breaks for the film industry, for example, resulted in the rich not having to pay billions in tax dollars and a lot of completely forgotten films..

Regulation of lending was dropped decades ago for good reasons. You will find that by the time its put in place the economy will be reviving on its own, and the regulations will hamper growth.

Activitsts frequently cite the failures of the market, and conveniently forget that the failures of market regulation - particularly knee-jerk regulation - have been more numerous and costly.

People still are not getting to the root of the problem, which in this case is key to understanding it, and proposing useful fixes. Here is an article about the Canadian situation, which should be of interest as the two countries are not that dissimilar in many ways: Global Financial Meltdown: Forces beyond our control, or the greatest scam ever? http://www.rudemacedon.ca/greatest-sting-ever.html

A Biblical Perspective on the Economic Crisis

Some words from the Prophet Amos:

2.6 This is what the LORD says:
....
They sell the righteous for silver,
and the needy for a pair of sandals.

2.7 They trample on the heads of the poor
as upon the dust of the ground
and deny justice to the oppressed...

5:10 you hate the one who reproves in court
and despise him who tells the truth.

5.11 You trample on the poor
and force him to give you grain….

Haven't we, metaphorically speaking, done all this? Have we not denied justice to the poor and despised those who tell the truth about eg climate change. Have we not sold the righteous for silver?

I do not think our current travails are a result of some miraculous intervention on the part of a wrathful God out to punish us. But I do think that had we all behaved somewhat more responsibly, had we concentrated on charity and justice instead of the pursuit of a fast buck, we would not today be suffering the consequences of our excesses.

Curmudgeon,
"more numerous and costly" -really?
Do you think that, in aggregate, the costs of all the ill-conceived regulation schemes exceed the capital and production lost in the current unfolding catastrophe? Few countries haven't used development policy of some kind to grow their economies, particularly Japan and Korea and their top management did not receive a fraction of the salaries of the West's current managerial incompetents. Read an economic history of Japan, it will be instructive.