Total, total bullshit”?

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Oh dear. When Nas­sim Khadim from The Age asked me to com­ment yes­ter­dy on the elec­toral asser­tion being made by the Lib­er­al Party–that ris­ing State debt was putting upward pres­sure on inter­est rates–I respond­ed that the asser­tion was:

Total, total bull­shit. It’s like say­ing that some­body dropped a peb­ble into the ocean and that caused a tsuna­mi. And you can quote me on that.”

Well, I expect­ed just to see the “peb­ble and tsuna­mi” anal­o­gy turn up in the report. Instead, I saw the first two sen­tences of the above–and learnt the hard way that edi­to­r­i­al stan­dards at Aus­trali­a’s major dailies are no longer as reserved as I took for grant­ed:

PM on New Zealand Reserve Bank Policy Shift–transcript

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Will Bud­get tax cuts fuel inflation?  (click here for the MP3 file)
PM — Wednes­day, 9 May , 2007  18:14:52
Reporter: Stephen Long
MARK COLVIN: Now, will the tax cuts in the Bud­get cause infla­tion?

Some lead­ing econ­o­mists argue that the Reserve Bank could be forced to lift inter­est rates down the track because Gov­ern­ment spend­ing and tax cuts will increase con­sump­tion and prices.

But oth­ers dis­agree. They argue that debt lev­els are so high that many peo­ple will be hand­ing their tax cuts straight to the bank.

Public Talk at UTS today 1pm

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I’m speak­ing at Real­i­ty Check, as part of the ALP Fringe Con­fer­ence pro­gram, which runs par­al­lel to the nation­al con­fer­ence and pro­vides NGOs and oth­er groups with an inter­est in influ­enc­ing ALP pol­i­cy with a plat­form to host dis­cus­sions and sem­i­nars.

I’m one of three speak­ers and we have only one hour, so it will be rushed: if you want to par­tic­i­pate, don’t be late:

Date: Fri­day April 27th; Time: 1–2pm; Venue: UTS Hay­mar­ket Cam­pus, Build­ing C, lev­el 1, Room 31. Just up Dar­ling Dri­ve from the Con­ven­tion Centre/down from UTS Library (view map) Enter via Block D next to the ‘Art of food’ cafe.

Household Debt: US vs Australia

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As part of the back­ground to the Late­Line inter­view yes­ter­day, I graphed the US house­hold debt to GDP ratio against the Aus­tralian. All the news recent­ly has been about the sub-prime cri­sis in the States, of course: but guess where house­hold debt has been grow­ing fastest? That’s right, good old Aus­tralia has out-done itself once more. The accom­pa­ny­ing graph­ic tells the sto­ry, which I’ll embell­ish in the next Debt­watch report in ear­ly April.

House­hold Debt to GDP, USA & Aus­tralia