Australian Economy - Greed Always Comes Back To Bite

I think this article is well worth reading. In the midst of the current financial crisis it is important to realize that the Australian public are still highly leveraged, and will need to go through the process of mending their balance sheets. It is sad but a fact. It is important not to think that rallies in the short term spell the end of this financial malaise but rather a long arduous slog to get things balanced again.
Mike “Bearman”
Greed a deadly sin for the economy
Paul Sheehan
October 20, 2008
On July 30 Hans Redeker, head of foreign exchange strategy at BNP Paribas, Europe's biggest investment bank, predicted: "The Aussie is going down, big time."
Back then - it already seems like a long time ago - the Australian dollar was sitting majestically at 97 cents to the US dollar, which was taking a battering. But the Aussie did, indeed, go down, big time. Within three months it had crashed by 33 per cent to US65.5 cents. Now Redeker has issued another warning to Australia. We'll get to that. But first, let's look at his track record.
December 2006: Redeker predicted a sharp recession in the United States, saying the condition of its housing market was worse than the experts were stating and the flow-on effects would be much worse than predicted. That was almost two years ago. He was right.
January 2008: he predicted the Aussie dollar was facing two years of decline, and expected to see it fall to 66 cents. He was right. He also predicted a rise in financial market volatility, higher inflation worldwide, higher interest rates in Asia, weakening demand for Australia's minerals exports from China, and a weaker sharemarket in China, all of which would drive down the Australian dollar. Since then, the Shanghai sharemarket has crashed 50 per cent from its peak.
October 2008: two weeks ago Redeker repeated his claim that abundant foreign money had been available to Australia and too much of it had been spent on real estate, creating a speculative bubble: "The easy money went straight into real estate c Australia will now have to generate 4 per cent of GDP to meet payments to foreign holders of its assets. This is twice as high as the burden faced by the US."
After the Australian Reserve Bank slashed key interest rates by 1 per cent, Redeker also told London's Telegraph that he was concerned about what the Australian Government may do: "Yes, Australia has a fiscal surplus, but that does not offer as much protection as people think. If the Government boosts spending further, the current account deficit will spiral out of control." (my emphasis – Mike)
And what has the Rudd Government just done? Boost spending.
There was certainly no discussion of the current account deficit spinning out of control, or Australia's excessive debt, when the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, launched his $10 billion economic stimulus package last week, nor any from the Opposition Leader, Malcolm Turnbull, who offered in-principle bipartisan support.
It gets worse. Redeker continued: "There is a risk, however remote, that Australia could face some of the foreign funding difficulties we have seen in Iceland."
Iceland! Iceland was the most leveraged economy in the developed world when it became the first economy to be bankrupted by the credit crisis. You do not want to be mentioned in the same sentence as Iceland unless the discussion is fishing or blondes.
After quoting Redeker, the Telegraph's global business columnist, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, weighed in with his own commentary: "The immediate problem for Australia's banks is that they gorged on offshore US dollar markets to fund expansion because the interest costs were lower. They were playing c on a huge scale with leverage c European banks face much the same problem as dollar liabilities come back to haunt, but Australian lenders have pushed their luck even further."
Gabriel Stein, of Lombard Street Research, weighed in with this, after noting that Australian household debt had reached 177 per cent of gross domestic product, almost a world record: "It is amazing that in the midst of the biggest commodity boom ever seen they have still been unable to get a current account surplus. They have been living beyond their means for 10 years. What worries me is that productivity growth has been very low: they have been coasting after their reforms in the 1990s."
The global financial world is watching the Australian dollar because it holds a key to the great unanswered question of this uncertain era: will the global market punish a currency for its declining interest yield? Or will it reward a currency because of the soundness of its economy? Central banks are acutely interested in the answer.
Evans-Pritchard thinks the early signs are hopeful that the answer is the good one, that nations will be rewarded for having sound economies. But he does not believe Australia can escape the consequences of excess: "Australia has allowed its net foreign liabilities to reach 60 per cent of GDP during a decade-long boom, twice the level of the US. The country will, in effect, have to pay 4 per cent of GDP in the form of rents to foreign asset-holders as the bill for such extravagance falls due." (my emphasis – Mike)
The bill is falling due. Earlier in the year Australians travelling in Europe would have paid about $1.50 for every euro spent. Today they need $2.10. The Aussie dollar is weak again, despite all the luck of the China boom. This raises a number of awkward questions. Did the lucky country became the greedy country? Did it fail to sufficiently embark on a program of nation-building during the resources boom? Was most of the bonus redistributed as tax cuts, which were spent chasing bigger mortgages, bigger homes, new cars and general consumption, stimulating short-term economic growth but not enough on long-term productivity and higher savings?
During 17 years of unbroken economic expansion and a 10-year commodities boom, it took a lot of people, borrowing a lot of money, taking a lot of unproductive risk, to get to where we are today: a nation with excessive debt and excessive vulnerability to external circumstances barely within our control.
This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/10/19/1224351052160.html