Syntheses and reflect various comments I've made in the past but in different words. http://news.goldseek.com/EuroCapital/1359748193.php
There is a lot to take out of that article bs, thanks. It wouldn't be too difficult for a national government to legislate that a % of all foodstuffs and other locally produced goods be sold on a domestic market. Mandated markets - say 20% of all seafood to be sold in Australia, the rest will be able to be exported. Yearly quotas that would need to be met, if demand didn't meet supply, the domestic quota would be cut, with the excess exported the following year or dumped etc. A socially engineered market with the availability of goods determined by a bureaucracy not a consumer. Such legislation could be sold very easily to the electorate if it was "in the best interests of Australians". :/
Noooooo! Central command and control by bureaucracy? Let me renew my passport first. We called it the USSR... and even western bureaucracies suck the life out of any business they touch.
In today's global economy, a country need only display one or two of these attributes, or cynically, attributes that when compared to other countries are less negative, for that country's currency to approach "safe currency status". The AUD, CAD and NZD have held their own well because they stink less, even the Mongolian Tughrit has appreciated massively, and that's only because it was once an isolated country and now it aint and it's got shedloads of stuff the others want at the moment, and unlike the Swedes, it aint flatpack furniture. Time to buy MMK? There are no safe currencies now, there are only currency plays. And the irony of it all is that the safest currency in the long term may well be the USD. Who knows? My only advice........
I'm reading a few 'Euro has survived USD is cooked' articles. Draghi's 'whatever it takes' seems to have convinced everyone Euro good. Dollar bad. I think we're one Wall Streeter with a fat finger and a line too many of cocaine away from SHTF and no-where to run because: http://etfdailynews.com/2013/01/30/...illion-dollars-of-gold-and-silver-in-january/
^ In fact, the above is the whole point of Gold and Silver. Rather than working for money which eventually degrades into peanuts you want to hold the value of money so you either don't have to work as much as you otherwise would, or you end up with much more for the same amount of work you otherwise would have. Instead most people get much of the value of their money stolen over time and end up having to work more which requires more and more employment which requires an ever booming economy. Which you supposedly get to buy destroying the value of money more. And so the cycle goes. You have to wonder when the madness is going to end.
The problem is, people by nature will always look to take the easiest path. For the past 30years the low AUD has allowed our realistically uncompetitive goods to remain attractive. This causes our inflation to go up unnecessarily and with it the cost of living. This causes the Labour unions to cry foul and hold employers and whole industries to ransom for higher wages without any substantial productivity gains. Continuing the cycle of downward uncompetitiveness as all industries are not FORCED to innovate and do things smarter and more efficient. Now the dollar has changed and the inefficiency of Australia is merely being shown for what it is and not actually caused by the high AUD. Right now is a time for Australians to take this as a challenge to innovate and become more efficient in everything we do and also to trim down on consumption. Take the high AUD as a blessing. Sooner rather than later the race to the bottom of the other countries will catch up to us so that their costs of living reach the retarded levels of Australia. When that time comes, if we do everything, smarter, better quality and cheaper than the biggest competitors we will be the biggest winner.
Ditto. It's never been cheaper to buy good quality capital equipment from overseas to help this happen. The trick is to not piss it up against the wall on excessive, unnecessary housing stock (or similar) like the Americans did.
Excellently put, I agree with everything you said, I'm just not sure Australian's have it in them to innovate. At least not the current crop which has been through this process and become lazy and lackadaisical as a result.
They have no choice. Those that have the ability will prosper as those that are too lazy cop a hiding and once on the poverty line, they will find ways of making a dollar once necessity forces it out of them. The path of least resistance is unfortunately to lobby the government to play the currency manipulation game like the rest of them and that is the worst thing we could do. As stated, use this time to import more productive items. Take mining for example, the recent profits (and exchange rate) have allowed mining companies to invest in huge excavators in the vicinity of 850t. They are huge productivity advancements that will yield great results once the debt is purged and natural growth can continue. Sure they can lay off all the expensive labour they want right now to save dollars while coal prices etc are low but once things pick back up again, only the best will be rehired to drive them.
Unfortunately, there is no incentive for business people to invest in manufacturing. Mining magnates are amongst the most prominent of our business community for a very good reason, minerals is about the only thing Australia can do competitively. A skim through the top ten of Australia's richest makes the obvious point, if you're not into mining, then it's tough. Only one of the top 10 richest Australians earns his money from manufacturing - and that was a business he inherited. The high AUD is just the nail in the coffin.
Not now, the manufacturing sector has been hamstrung by inflation and the trade unions to the point that there is now no use. The time to invest in manufacturing should have been progressively over the last 30 years, while we had the low AUD keeping us artificially competitive. I guess the only one to be able to make a profit in manufacturing in the near future will be an outsider that has an innovative plan to produce goods with very little labour.
Manufacturing will be automated for the most part anyway. It isn't going to be a driver of jobs. Machines will be cheaper than even Chinese workers. That's why I think more than anything we need a re-think about what exactly we are trying to achieve in our market economy. Do we want everyone working all the time for ever decreasing value of money earnt or do we want the necessities and luxuries of life to be as cheap as possible for the maximum number of people? And if that means people don't need to work as much, then why is that a bad thing? I think the current property prices are the fundamental problem in this equation. So much of the average worker's money going on debt repayment. Not to mention the tax regime.
Thats a very good point about machines . The capital to buy those machines would be the problem for most . A person with some foresight could see that the AUD & interest rates are a blessing & the rest of the world is on sale for the entrepenuers to invest in that machinery .
You sound like my teachers in the 70's. "You should learn a musical instrument because when you are older you will have so much spare time for leisure because technology will make everything so much easier, you'll need to have a skill to fill in your leisure time." People not wanting to work as much is a bad thing, it's a sickness, it's the mantra of the entitlement cadre, it's bullshit. If you want something, you should strive for it. It only comes easy if someone else is being screwed. Karl Marx and I see eye-to-eye on one thing - our work defines us.
