Shareswatch Australia

One of the world’s largest countries, sparsely populated, with extensive minerals in its remote hinterland deserts. Sound like Australia? This is Mongolia. On the cusp of an investment boom, fuelled by Chinese demand for resources and driven by Mongolia’s position just to the north of China’s industrial heartlands. Mongolia’s economy, like Australia’s, has defied the global gloom.

World attention focuses on the problems of the Greek economy — no doubt with a large helping of schadenfreude added: There, but for the grace of God, go the rest of us is the thought.

Over the last few months media commentary regarding the Australian economy has turned decidedly gloomy. The wonders of the mining boom are now being questioned,  the U.S. and European economies matter again and people are starting to wake up to the reality that an economic strategy that basically relies on China dragging Australia along for the ride might not be that clever.

As each week passes the moans of struggling businesses grow louder and finally it appears that the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) board members have woken up to the fact that the economy has been sliding backwards since late 2010. Once again the RBA had made a tactical blunder and raised rates too high just as they did as the global financial crisis was unfolding back in late 2007.

First a few personal facts. My involvement with China goes back to the early sixties as a diplomat in Hongkong where I was learning Mandarin. For a while I served as China desk officer in Canberra’s foreign affairs ministry. Then during Cultural Revolution days I finally got to China, by organizing an Australian pingpong team (over Canberra’s opposition).

In the 1960’s the Japanese rightwing had a problem. The leftwing was arguing strongly that Japan’s postwar economy badly needed access to the markets and raw materials of China, North Korea and the Soviet Union if it was to survive (in prewar years it had depended heavily on China and the Korean peninsula for both).

Toyota’s current recall woes have generated a range of articles about the Japanese economy as journalists rush to get some Japan flavoured content served up to their masters. But often these articles simply rehash the same tired cliches about Japan and it’s economy and don’t provide people outside Japan with a balanced view of what is really happening.

Over the last week the Australian stock market has taken a turn downwards pretty much inline with markets across Asia, Europe and the U.S.  Once again no mater how much the RBA talks up our economy, the fact is that Australia’s economic health depends on how our major trading partners are doing and investors are starting to get worried about the global economic outlook.

It appears that finally the Australian media and by default the wider public are starting to worry about Rudd’s mountain of debt. At first many Australian’s were quite happy to pocket their Government handouts in some crazed belief that is was magic money that would not have to be repaid some day or at least, not by them. But perhaps the latest Federal Budget has finally got people thinking as opposed to living happily in ignorance in the Matrix.

Like many Australians I have been frustrated for many years over the slow progress that was made in getting affordable high speed internet connections widely available across Australia.  However in order to get a world class communications network deployed we need the private sector to be in the driving seat and for the government to be involved as little as possible.  Yet thanks to government mismanagement, Australia is now about to spend a fortune of taxpayers money to roll-out a national broadband network.

Searching the reasons for Japan’s ‘lost decade’ – the deflation and stunted growth said to have plagued Japan ever since the collapse of the Bubble economy in the early nineties – has long been popular among US and UK commentators seeking an answer to the West’s current economic problems. The interest is welcome. But some of the results are bizarre. Almost all the main US media, the conservative Wall Street Journal in particular, have run articles saying the blame lies with Japan’s post-Bubble, Keynesian-style infrastructure spending.

It seems that the old bubble economy stories about Japan are doing the rounds again in business journals and finance websites these days as lazy journalists try to make comparisons between infrastructure spending in Japan during the 1990′s, and the economic stimulus packages being proposed in the U.S and other countries.