John Linton
......and the likelihood of a recession in Australia in 2010 are now being signalled?
I suppose that is the sort of problem you confront when you have a 'Ken Doll' like Krudd as the 'leader' (now that's a laugh) of your country. In case you hadn't noticed the "world leader" that Krudd models himself on, the equally useless over spender Obama, precipitated a fall in world share markets of over 5% over the past few days with his version of Krudd's NBN2 bankruptcy plan - although that fruit loop having spent a trillion or so dollars he wasn't lucky enough to have in the piggy bank courtesy of his previous administrations - he is going to "do something about the banks".
Like Krudd's NBN2 cover up lies it doesn't matter whether or not he actually does what his speech writers/spin spivs have him speak but the fact that he make such a lunatic statement continues to expose him in the same way that Krudd is now fully exposed. Obama and Krudd can only do two things:
1) The can both make promises endlessly without EVER delivering on a single one of them
2) They can both spend more money than the presses can print faster than any previous person in the history of politics
They both do these country destroying things because neither of them has the slightest knowledge or experience required to hold their current positions, but they both love talking endlessly as if they do. ANY factual analysis of either of these poseurs promises versus delivery starkly shows a track record of zero correlation between the two.
I am the first person to admit that my personal knowledge of international or national economics is slight bordering on vestigial but I read widely and I have been reading widely over a long enough period of time to be able to distinguish the polemicists and hacks from the people who actually know what they are talking about based on the simple assessment method of letting time prove or not prove the accuracy of what they predict and say.
So it is with great uneasiness that I approach this weekend's review of Exetel's 2010 calendar year business plan and, although I can't remember how I felt last year at this time when Krudd was maundering on about the 'GFC' and the tough times that would beset Australia I never took that very seriously because I saw zero indications of any negativity in Exetel's or anyone else's business then so, apart from being slightly more cautious on some of the more 'daring' aspects of the plan, I actually made no changes to the expansion we had planned for 2009 which, now the year is over, came out just as planned with us investing another almost $A2 million in to Exetel and almost doubling the number of people we employ as well as making the predicted profit for the year - so much for Krudd and co's doom and gloom scenarios throughout 2009.
It's a completely different story now. From Telstra on down all I see is true doom and gloom in terms of (in Telstra's case) public statements that their business in not only down on previous forecasts but is possibly down so far it is in danger of being less than the previous year in terms of revenue and in the case of other companies with which we compete I see constant signs of pricing 'adjustments' and personnel decreases which only mean they are not meeting the financial targets they started the FY 2010 year with. While Exetel has already achieved a record January with over a week to go I also realise that our sudden sales growth across 4, maybe 5, products/services is entirely due to other suppliers customers looking to save money which, perversely you may think, means that any upturn in our business is because people are looking to reduce their expenditure as they too see the immediate future in a more pessimistic light (I don't think its because 70% more people have suddenly realised that Exetel is much better as a supplier than they thought we were).
So, while it may seem strange, we will approach this review having had by far the best seven months of our, short, business life, far more pessimistically than at any Australia Day weekend of the past six years. I haven't got a clue what the future will bring Australia financially over the coming twelve months but every indication is that it won't be as good as 2009. Doubtless Krudd will continue to spend even more money (12 submarines that will never see a single useful minute's deployment, billions of dollars for fighter planes that will never fire a shot in anger and, let's not forget the 'NBN2') while Australia runs out of water and edges towards Keating's famous prediction.
Maybe I'll just open a few bottles and watch the tennis on TV - it seems a more useful thing to do.