Nebulous wrote:

> <snip>
> 
> You're not at this juncture because of the international community.  You
> have reached this point because your government has pumped massive amounts
> of liquidity into the market by reducing interest rates to prevent a
> downturn. It did this just after the dotcom burst and then again later on.
> One of the impacts of this has been rises in house prices and people
> remortgaging to buy consumer goods.
> 
> Policy needed tightening at least a year ago to prevent a 'hard landing' but
> that wasn't possible given the political situation. So rates stayed low to
> help until after the election and the hard landing now seems inevitable.
> 
> Your arms budget and military commitments haven't helped the situation, but
> it was there anyway without the recent jaunts.
> 
> Neb
> 

Well, Neb, I guess that about sums it up.

JPM