What we can blame the press for, however, is their abject failure to provide education on "what it all means". This thread is a salutary example.

Some of the comments here defy belief, in their complete lack of understanding of how the world of banking and commerce actually works, and how its activities affect them personally.

DEN71, for example, is "blue in the face" thinking about our representative democracy. Which is all very fine, I'm pretty concerned about it myself. But...

>>Take the sell-out of Australia starting with the Hawke regime's adoption of the neo-liberal free market mantra.<<

These policies have provided the average Australian with a level of financial comfort and a lifestyle that they could not have even dreamed about before the Hawke/Keating team did their job.

>>Privatization; who has seen a reduction in the cost of essential services?<<

Privatization, in any economy, is designed principally to free the government from expending untold amounts of taxpayer dollars on enterprises of which they know and understand diddly-squat. So a more accurate measurement would be, how much taxpayer money has been saved, since the privatization?

>>Opening the country to foreign direct investment...<<

That's a doozy. Where else could the money to develop our industries - particularly mining - have come from? We could not have borrowed it all, our economy was simply not that big.

>>Floating the dollar...<<

Boy oh boy. Surely you have noticed the problems that a fixed exchange rate can create, then exacerbate, in places like Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus etc...? Or the decade-long row over China's central control over same? Allowing any currency to find an appropriate level in relation to other countries is fundamental to stability, not counter to it.

>>De-regulation has locked Australia into an already passé economic model<<

If it is passé, what has replaced it, pray?

>>...many countries have escaped the yoke of IMF and World Bank austerity and have now regained democratic control of their social and economic futures<<

Like, who?

An absolute farrago of misapprehension, all in one post.

Classic.

">>...many countries have escaped the yoke of IMF and World Bank austerity and have now regained democratic control of their social and economic futures<<

Like, who?"

Zimbabwe?

Thank you, Pericles, for some hard-headed sanity at last.

Joe

Pericles
Thankyou for your for your opinion piece in response to mine. Time will tell.
Den 71