John Linton One thing you can't happen noticing about 'business' in Australia since I returned from my almost now forgotten holiday is the amount of caution, if not outright pessimism, that comes up in almost every conversation I have had with people over the past two weeks. I mentioned that even our bank manager called us to see if we needed to borrow any money and he made several references to the lending around Australia (except in mining) being as though some financial 'tap' had been turned off somewhere. I personally know virtually nothing about economics or world financial trends or anything related to those subjects but I have my tickets to this week's Bonython lecture and I am looking forward to having the simpler aspects of those subjects explained to me by Niall Ferguson:
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/civilisation-goes-west-leaving-empire-on-the-edge-of-ruin-20100725-10qeu.html?rand=1280065793351
"''You had the golden opportunity, but it was frittered away in a pseudo-Keynesian spending binge.''
So much for Kevin Rudd's and Julia Gillard's claim to
have saved Australia from the global economic crisis. The world's most
famous economic historian has just given them an F."
I was sent some of the notes made by an acquaintance who was fortunate enough to have attended the CIS conference over the weekend not because he thought I would understand much of what he sent but because he thought they would give some better understanding of next Wednesday's address. I can understand the concept of epochs ending and have enough understanding of past epochs ending to understand why 500 years of European pre-eminence is reaching its particular 'end of days' - I also understand that such endings have no abrupt end and are generally only capable of being seen in hind sight by all but the very skilled. It seems inevitable that advantages that 'push' one part of the planet's residents towards pre-eminence eventually 'move' away from the beneficiaries due to inexorable changes in population and empowerment. Large populations will inevitably 'prevail' over smaller populations given enough time - nuclear arsenal and war like mentality or not.
I'm not sure whether becoming (or even now being?) a mining colony of the PRC is very appealing to the majority/any Australians but given Australian's voting Federal and State elections it seems unlikely that they would ever notice such a transition until the terms of trade made it clear that Australians were only useful for extracting ore and coal and oil and gas and shipping it from an Australian to an Asian port. But that's probably far enough in the future for many people not to concern themselves with. But it is pretty obvious that many more people within the Australian communications industry have become uneasy about the future over the last little while than at any time that I have noticed in the past. If the current government gets re-elected then I would think that number would increase rather than decrease. Telstra's latest attempt at buying its competitors customer bases is just another example of the changes that are taking place. They may very well succeed but the new lower prices will mean that more than a few Telstra employees will no longer be able to be afforded over the coming months - not even Telstra can try and reduce a service's revenue by 25% and fly with the same formation....they will be able to join the centre Link queues with the employees of the other Australian communication providers who they helped put out of business.
Why is this the case? Why are so many people I meet in business expressing extreme caution about "how things may turn out over the next year or two"? Perhaps it's because it hasn't been since the Whitlam fiasco that Australians have been exposed to 'amateur hour' in the government of their country? 'Good on you Kev' lasted less than three years before even his own 'political persuasion' couldn't tolerate his stupidity any more and created modern Australian history by getting rid of him before the electorate did....that is the electorate that so joyfully voted for him in the first place. And now.......well 'wouldn't it be good to try a woman as PM'?.....well - wouldn't it be good to elect Kevin Rudd because he MUST be better than that John Howard guy....for the same reason electing a communist influenced union hack is never a good idea irrespective of gender...... doesn't anyone ever learn? Rudd was a fiasco equivalent to or surpassing the greatest Labor clown of all - Whitlam. Will those fools that voted for Rudd actually remember that?....it was less than three years ago for goodness sake....they haven't had a common sense injection since then....their political 'views' are still infantile and cause great harm....doubtless why so many people in business are so negative about their company's immediate prospects.....its hard to have to have lived with the current bunch of morons without having to contemplate, even after they have proven to be a total disaster, the same "Kev is so brilliant" voters are going to prove themselves to be terminally stupid all over again....I guess stupid people never actually realise how stupid they are.
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