Path: news.ccsf.jp!tomockey.ddo.jp!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!postnews.google.com!p2g2000prf.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: Declan Murphy Newsgroups: fj.life.in-japan Subject: Re: Pushing on a piece of string Date: Thu, 25 Dec 2008 00:44:54 -0800 (PST) Organization: http://groups.google.com Lines: 31 Message-ID: <418de5f2-9a22-42f4-bd3f-daa665c5caa1@p2g2000prf.googlegroups.com> References: <2cc55ece-0a0b-4fb1-bae0-df2ff9b40471@r36g2000prf.googlegroups.com> <0ba196f8-f129-48d3-a233-111235036769@m4g2000vbp.googlegroups.com> <4950467a$0$31208$8f2e0ebb@news.shared-secrets.com> <22957c6c-fdac-482e-8afd-3493f12750c3@g3g2000pre.googlegroups.com> <2fdcce9a-aad6-4660-bb1a-36c5e9ebf4f9@s1g2000prg.googlegroups.com> <657fdeb3-f97e-462a-aba1-788f516bad07@t39g2000prh.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 114.152.120.221 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: posting.google.com 1230194694 25529 127.0.0.1 (25 Dec 2008 08:44:54 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 25 Dec 2008 08:44:54 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: p2g2000prf.googlegroups.com; posting-host=114.152.120.221; posting-account=dFdNnAoAAACo_-792nICp6wBtnsk5ZbZ User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; Media Center PC 5.0; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30618),gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Xref: news.ccsf.jp fj.life.in-japan:167827 On Dec 25, 1:31=A0am, "John W." wrote: > On Dec 24, 9:35=A0am, mtfes...@netMAPSONscape.net wrote:> Declan Murphy <= declan_mur...@hotmail.com> wrote: > > > On Dec 23, 1:56?pm, mtfes...@netMAPSONscape.net wrote: > > > > 1) What's the rush? > > > There would normally be no need to rush. At the moment though, > > > uncertainty over future fiscal policy (taxation & gross public sector > > > expenditure) is exacerbating the slowdown in domestic demand. If the > > > Difficult to see what can be enacted in a couple days that will change > > this measurably. > > > In the meantime, there is a sense of gathering optimism (which you > > seem to share, for some reason) that the "next guy will fix it". Very > > likely, this slows, not hastens, any decline. > > This last statement is very true and very worrying for me. It shows > that we really aren't learning anything from this fix we're in. And I > don't think we're in an awful mess, yet. But I think it could get bad. I think some of the recent rallies involve consumers and investors thinking "it can't get any worse", mixed in with the traditional dead cat bounce. Australia (one of the few OECD economies not in recession) is posting record consumer led sales (in the retail sector at least), a combination of lower interest rates, lower fuel prices and some fiscal stimulus. There doesn't appear to be any uncertainty as to what the Oz government and Reserve Bank is doing, from support measures to the car industry (all of which are foreign firms) through to broader fiscal and monetary policy settings. What the new US administration will do isn't as clear as it could be, and purely from a economics point of view, probably should be.