ozbailout guarantees high futureinterest rates, page-12

Not that often that I've agreed with you in the past Yellowcake, but I think you are spot on here.

This stimulus, along with bailouts by governments being seen worldwide, are the worst possible solutions to the problems at hand...increasing debt is simply not the answer...inefficient industries and businesses with flawed models should be allowed to collapse, and be replaced by more efficient industry...in a sense, to allow darwinian theory to evolve in the marketplace. If a business is run poorly, then why should taxpayer money, your money and mine, be used to prop it up.

Governments IMO should not be involving themselves in private enterprise, such as the US Govt buying equity stakes in their failing banking systems, but should be setting up independent regulatory bodies that ACTIVELY oversee and regulate the private sector, and for these bodies to have wide sweeping powers which they are prepared to use. I wonder how much of an effect an effective corporate watchdog would have on our market, and not a toothless ASIC, or the ASX which has so many conflicts of interest with our market, that it cannot possibly be impartial, or act wholly in the best interests of investors.

But, more important than anything else, people need to learn how to save...and when money needs to be spent, then to be spent wisely....and this is where we as Australians fail miserably....and until we can learn how to save, then the problems we face now will always be with us, and will return in the future in far more potent forms.

There's a saying that goes something like

"if you are not a socialist when you are younger, then you have no heart...if you are still a socialist when you are older, then you have no brain"

After voting for Labour all my life, they have lost my support in light of this massive spending spree they are about to undertake....Costello for all his smugness, would have been a far better choice in hindsight...at least he understands the value of a dollar.