What about Barnaby Joyce?  So, he's a senator, (and a ?National? – or did he get the shit$ and go independent, can't remember), but he seems to have his own brain a bit and a set of balls.  Yeah, I was just joking about good old Please Explain.

So baaa baaaaa baaaaaaaa baaa.  Baaaa baaaaaa baa.

I'll have to check all your links from now on, obviously the mere appearance of a link does not assure the credibility of your information, just your enthusiasm to appear credible.

Increased business lending = confindence.  You still have not rebutted that, only waffled on about how business borrowing is bad.  Pain, and confidence are not mutually exclusive, you know. 

China china china.  Yeah, I can't really argue that one, don't know enough about it really.  Expand your point with conjecture (I love conjecture) China recession = massive reduction in finance worldwide = higher interest rates = bad.  Hey, has this already happened.  Baaaaa baa.

That's enough for this little sheep tonight.
S

I'm afraid I'm not always sure when you are taking the pi$$ and when you are actually agreeing with me. 

do you think Suncorp is strong?  I had believed that they were the bank at risk of a rush, which is why Kruddy guaranteed deposits, to stop them from collapsing.   Perhaps that was one of your sarcasms?

OK, my expression is a bit wrong there, with the weaker economies lending Australia money.  I was more getting at the idea that a) in an ocean full of sinking ships, our floundering vessel might be a more attractive prospect for investment than one that was well an truly stuffed.
b) why would another economy decide Australia was not safe to lend to, when it may be safer than others This was more in response to the poster who suggested that interest rates would rise when the rest of the world decided it was too risky to lend money to Australia.  And maybe your point here is worth expanding.  Perhaps interest rates will rise because no one has any money to lend to Australia, not that they don't want to, but because they can't afford it.

No recession?  I must have misheard the news.  I thought the last quarter was negative growth, technically a recession.  OK, if I'm wrong about that I'll cop it on the chin.  Anyway, you should know you sound a bit like Lawrence Springborg on that ALP ad.

"It suggests that our economy is heading into another boom as business struggle to keep afloat with sinking profits and thus have to borrow more money to survive
http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,,24975203-951,00.html"
Bull.  Your link to a news story about one company doesn't mean that is what is happening in the whole economy.  Rio tinto in this article are looking to raise equity, not debt.  I said business lending is up, (as in debt). (And upon reflection, the statistic I heard MAY have been about small business lending)  Debt and equity are two different things.  Perhaps business is borrowing money to fund a shortfall in operating budget due to downward pressure on profit, perhaps business sees new opportunity within the current market and is seizing the opportunity while interest rates are low.  Either way, the decision to borrow indicates confidence in the ability to repay the loan.  Confidence in the future of the business.  The banks decision to lend this money to business also indicates a confidence in the ability to repay the loan. 

Your little graph on the home price index is not an adequate rebuttal about the sub prime mortgage issue.  Interesting graph though.  To me the graph illustrates how house prices have changed in the USA and Aust over the period 1890 to now(ish).  This is just as indicative of the status of the respective economies in 1890 as it is of their status today.  In 1890 I can only imagine that the USA economy was more developed than the Australian economy, and the Australian economy has done quite a bit of catching up, which may be somewhat responsible for Australian house prices rising so much more compared to the 1890 price than has been seen in America.  (All pure conjecture).  I have no argument with the fact that Australian real estate is terribly overpriced.  There was more at play, though, in the American sub prime disaster than simply overinflated housing prices.

Yeah, that's a good idea, I might just ring up someone and find that out (interest rates).  Don't know why I didn't think of it before, really.  While I'm at it I'll ring the US govt and ask them how much silver they've got left and when they plan to dump that on the market.   

Congratulations on the referenced opinion.  Pity some of the links had only a vague connection to your point.  I couldn't justify the time to download the Obama thing – perhaps you could surmise?

Pity you don't have time to register yourself to vote.  You could go and register and move to Beaudesert, where you could vote for Pauline Hanson.  But then, maybe she IS a part of a plot to take over the world, dye everyone's hair red and mandate poor fashion sense.

S

That is quite a scary scenario.  How likely is it though?  We are led to believe that our economy is one of the strongest / best positioned to wether the GFC.  If that is the case, isn't it most likely that credit will continue to be extended to Australia by the rest of the world?  Who else will they lend money to?  While our own economy might be shaky, or worse, perhaps more important, I would have thought is our economy's health relative to other economies around the world. 

Tell me about it. Self employed, with two business structures (one is primary production) and an investment property, filling in any sort of Centrelink form is an absolute nightmare.  And what if you underestimate your income, they over pay you and you have to pay it back.  We collect FTB A and B in our income tax return, which is a good way of offsetting any income tax that we might actually have to pay them (Our main business structure is a company which employs us as employees, so we pay PAYG Withholding there, meaning most of our income is already taxed before doing the tax return.  Even Child Care Benefit is too hard to work out, so i claim that at the end of the year too, and pay full fees a couple of days a week so i can run the office.  Sad thing is though that old Kruddy's bonus pyaments won't find their way to us until we do this year's income tax return.   I don't actually agree that we should be at all eligble for any sort of welfare, but if they are handing it out I'll have it.  Not going to turn it down on principle.  People as well off as us shouldn't be eligible though, as a matter of policy.  People alot better off than us get alot of money from the govt too, and that sucks too.  Sometimes I think I should go into politics.  Then I never could start working with idiots (which is what cut short my fruit picking career, thank God!).
S