Sunday, February 01, 2009

Australian Approach


What are our mates from down under doing to battle their recession.

As America is the world's economic engine, when we go south, so does the rest of the world.

Kevin Rudd is the Australian premiere. Curiously he is promoting a bailout stimulus plan that has characteristics of the Obama plan.

In general he is talking about tax cuts for the poor, not for the rich, for the poor. And he is talking about infrastructure development.

news.com.au: Kevin Rudd to announce tax cuts
The Federal Government is preparing to announce tax cuts for low-income earners as part of a stimulus package to help the rapidly deteriorating economy.

Senior government sources say the targeted tax relief will be part of a mixed package of big infrastructure and "nation-building" spending, as well as strategic, but direct, short-term cash injections into the economy.

But the package may arrive too late, as the International Monetary Fund's latest forecasts reveal that Australia will be in recession this year.

The IMF's latest private forecasts predict the Australian economy will contract by 0.2 per cent in the 2009 calendar year. At the very best, the economy will stall at zero growth, the fund says.

2 comments:

Glynn Kalara said...

We should be so lucky.

Jim Sande said...

They make it look simple, much smaller population though, only around 22 million people total. They seem like they are taking cues from Obama.