great depression on the cards, page-24

I think that most thinking people can see these problems in Australia and globally today. What matters is what we can do about the situation. Australia and some other developed nations today are to a very large extent service economies and, as Moby78 pointed out above, less and less productive. Here in Australia, we even import a lot of our fruit and vegetables, for God's sake- no doubt we are bound to do so under the rules of the WTO to which we are a signatory ... but what happens ... what do we do when, sometime in the future, we might find ourselves offside with those nations that supply us with many of things we need to survive if all of our factories and farms are a pittance of what they once were and , not only that, but the very expertise that is necessary to produce these things has dwindled away? And to what extent will we even be able - or free perhaps - to decide, by the time we wake up, what to do about it?

Although I would be hurt as much as others by such a move, I believe the only way out of this economic screw-up is to take our lumps now and let unproductive and parasitic businesses, banks, and what-have-you fail. These are the ones that are currently being paid for by the little man, the man in the street who faces ever higher mortgages, higher prices everywhere while wages do not keep pace, as a result of the profligacy that has taken, and is still taking place. Such businesses do not deserve to survive.

No doubt, that would take us into a deep deflationary depression and there would be much pain all round. But we would eventually come out of it renewed and ready to begin building an economy on a much more solid foundation. And, in any case, it would be no more painful than the inflationary depression we seem currently to be headed for ... much less so is my guess. Anyway, our politicians won't do it, so we needn't waste our breath.

I think that, somehow, we need to find a better model than this one where so many important decisions are made expressly for the short term. Politicians look no further than the next election; business looks no further than the next quarterly report. I personally don't know how we can solve this problem of 'short-term-ism' (myopia) in a way that is consistent with democracy (the leaders in non-democratic places are more able, of course, to plan for the longer term). Hopefully, there are people out there with the ability to see a better way forward.

Tez