Interesting that most markets worldwide fell..because of the recession in Australia? Or was it because of the dipsh1ts in Greece?

I didn't admit anything, I was just asking a question

its amazing how 7 months ago you could predict that greece wouldnt be able to form a government after its election! where do potential investors send the blank cheque?

You nailed it MrB...again!

Retravision southern{ tas, vic and southern nsw } goes into administration.

104 franchisees, their families and their employees all set to suffer.

A  recap of some of the events over the last months.

retravision-administration

sleep city- administration

colorado group-administration

WOW electronics- administration

borders- bankrupt

angus and robertson- bankrupt

jb hi fi- earnings downgraded

harvey norman- earnings downgraded

billabong- earnings downgraded

in the past year a total of 19 major bankruptcies or restructures.

515 major outlets closed in the last year

last week- St Hilliers building group- bankrupt

yesterday- Qantas to shed another 500 jobs immediatly and to close tullamarine maintenance permanently resulting in the loss of an additional 500 jobs directly and an unknown effect on suppliers.

more of the iceberg coming to the surface.

the recession

so we have all these retailers going out of business yet we still have low unemployment, where is everyone's money going?

TO THE BANKS!

an excessive amount of disposable income is going to  every level of govt via fees, charges, taxes, fines.

Are there any figures on what our Govts actually cost to run?

That's right sunshine. Liberal govt had been in power when the company was going bust. Take the blinkers off beautiful

Thebas,

Did you read the article where Russia is saying American is abusing human rights towards their protesters?


Time for China and Russia intervention?? Lol

Regards,
Niccolo

world is on a precipice niccolo ... the money will rule ... which countries are owned ... will behave .. the rouge states will at some stage bring things to a head

Recession?

We're 7% Bigger then we are before the GFC.
We have unlimited pipe coming in for money investments.
We just loaned IMF billions
Budget Surplus
4.9% Unemployment
Growing in trend
More jobs created under this Government then any other government.

interestingly, all figures released by govt  paint a much rosier picture than events in the real world indicate.

wayne swann has pencilled in 3% growth for the budget.IMAHO.Most optimistic  figure by non govt sources is 2.2%

this brings us to the reserve bank which relies on govt data.This is why the RB is so far behind the curve. Interest rates are at least 50 basis points higher than they should be.

this as all splitting hairs a  bit though.

China is the elephant on our room. It lands hard, australia will be squashed.That, coupled with a world wide down turn and i doubt that any govt can stop or reduce the effects.

Graphs and charts not included due to formatting.

article can be found at c rikey.com.au


Checking the docket on how expensive it is to do business in Oz
by Bernard Keane
Friday, 4 May 2012
Update below

Australia is a high-cost place to do business, apparently.

I know because I read it in the papers regularly. Tom Albanese, of Rio Tinto, complained this week about the high cost of doing business in Australia. BG Group saying the cost of its Gladstone coal-seam gas project have blown out. The Business Council cited high costs back in April. One of those absurd “business roundtables” the AFR conducts, back in February, was given over to business executives lamenting “we’re becoming a high-cost, low-productivity nation”.

Usually the fault is laid at the blame of the government. Labor was “anti-business”, complained Graham Bradley in February, mainly because of the Fair Work Act. But the carbon tax cops criticism too. Today the head of the AIG complained that the carbon tax was creating uncertainty because, unlike the GST, businesses couldn’t calculate its impacts.

So let’s look at the evidence.

Has the Fair Work Act increased costs for business? Let’s look at the ABS’s unit labour cost index. When the index is above 100, wage pressures are assumed to exist. How has it fared under this government?

So, this is pretty much the only government in 30 years to eliminate wage pressures for business. The only area where the government has failed to curb wage pressures has been in executive remuneration, which continues to relentlessly increase at rates well ahead of inflation.

How about industrial disputes? Let’s have a look at the long-term trend. This is the number of days lost to industrial disputes per thousand employees. There was a much-vaunted spike in disputes in the September quarter last year, mostly driven by aggressive employers, but otherwise the level of disputes remains at historic lows.

What about the business cost that is in the direct control of government, tax? Last year’s budget papers tell us the ratio between company tax to corporate gross operating surplus:

That is, outside mining, the overall tax take from business has fallen as a proportion of gross operating surplus. Plus, there’s the small matter of the corporate tax cut the government wants to introduce, which the Coalition and the Greens are opposing. In fact, this is a low-taxing government compared to its predecessor. Remember the Coalition’s rhetoric about being the party of small government, then have a look at tax revenue as a proportion of GDP and figure out which side of politics taxes less:

What else could the government be doing? Well it could avoid stimulating the rest of the economy so companies in the resources sector such as BG Group that need construction workers and material aren’t competing against the rest of the economy. And, lo and behold, the government is engaged in a massive fiscal contraction even before we get to the issue of a budget surplus for 2012-13.

What about the carbon price? Is that really a major source of uncertainty for business? Innex Willox of the AI Group laments that the impact of the carbon price is harder to calculate than the GST. But the carbon price impact will be small compared to that of the GST. Work done by the CSIRO and AECOM for the Climate Institute shows the price impact from the carbon price will be 0.6%, barely above the impact of Cyclone Yasi last year (0.5%), less than Cyclone Larry (0.8%) and less than a quarter of the impact of the GST (2.5%).  Treasury’s assessment is that the impact will be 0.7%.

That’s the impact on consumers, not businesses, but it gives a clear idea of the scale of impact compared to the GST that Willox believes was so much easier.

The historical data suggests that, when it comes to labour and tax costs, the claim that Australia is becoming more expensive is dead wrong. In fact, it’s the reason why the wage share of national income is currently only just above its historic low of 52%, while the profit share is higher than at any time before 2008. And that’s why capital expenditure is at record levels?—?nearly 30% of GDP. The business decisions of investors contradicts the claim that we’re driving business away with high costs.

The issue is not so much whether Australian is becoming a more expensive place to do business, as whether Australian business will ever be satisfied or whether it will continue to push for ever more wage cuts and corporate tax cuts at the expense of the rest of us.

Update: The ACTU’s Matt Cowgill says I’ve misused unit labor costs - see comment 2. For a detailed treatment of the issue (esp. minimum wages) see pp.44-54 of the ACTU minimum wage submission linked to above (and here).

This is a political thread.

Don't China have fitch rating of AA?

Need to take a leaf from Hitlers and Lincolns economic theories instead of idiots like MrBen.

What Recession?

Tell me MrBen,How would the Governments cut in public spending help us get though the "recession" like the Liberals intend to do.

Regards,
Niccolo

problem with the oecd estimations is that they have been too optimistic.Growth has continually undershot their estimates.

as I stated earlier- there seems to be a disconnect from govt figures  and real world events.

china just release its govt estimates for growth @ 8.25%- a laughable number by any measure.

those who study these kinds of numbers, non govt analyists, predict MAYBE , big MAYBE 6%, china needs 6% to break even with its population growth.

key here is- dont JUST rely on "official " figures. They  are put out by people who work for politicians, not even you would assert that politicians are honest.

around 120 billion fall in the value of stocks in a month.

plenty of superannuation accounts shrinking by the day.

  which company is the next to go out the back door? Happening every week.

"The organisation has endorsed the Government's plan to boost its cash reserves while the economy is strong and demand for resource exports is still high "

tell that to those who paid 75$ for rio tinto, 6$ for fortescue and 39$ for BHP  a few months ago

those who hold resource stocks are crying.