Farewell to 2009
Here’s Trouble hopes you all had a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and all other relevant Season’s greeting.
May the new year of 2010 bring you financial security and satisfaction, and opportunities to pursue hobbies and relationships. The golden lesson that I have learnt over the last few years is that you, as a person, have more power to improve the lives and well-being of your friends, family and employer than any politician, banker or economist.
Let me recap briefly on the year that was 2009:
Global Financial Crisis
In the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis, Australia has so far avoided a recession thanks to solid demand for raw materials from China, a recovery in metals prices and a lower US dollar leading to cheaper imports. The Federal government’s $200 billion dollar stimulus package has also helped fuel a recovery in consumer and business spending.
As a result, the biggest risk to the Australian economy is interest rate rises. In addition to the $200 billion that the Government had to borrow, household debt has blown out to $1.2 trillion dollars, or $56,000 for every man, woman and child or 100.2% of GDP. A hike in interest rates, e.g. to manage inflation, would be devastating.
Nonetheless, our problems are nothing compared to the USA. Although they are out of recession, the US government is expected to run a budget deficit of US$1 trillion for fiscal year 2009, resulting in a total debt of $12.8 trillion dollars. This is largely due to the financing of the Iraq war, government bailouts of failing firms under the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP).
The US have no way in hell to pay back this money, the only way I can see them getting out of this debt problem is by devaluing their own currency by promoting inflation, which will make a lot of people around the world very unhappy.
Furthermore, as a result of bailing out financial firms, which were responsible for the reckless actions that led to the Global Financial Crisis, they have preserved these greedy corporate cultures which will no doubt survive to repeat history in the future.
ETS Defeated
The stupid Emissions Trading Scheme was defeated in the Australian senate, not because of its stupidity, but because of political infighting. The main casualty was Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull, who was replaced by Tony Abbott. I do not yet know what to make of Abbott.
Copenhagen summit
Although this received a lot of coverage, I consider it a minor event. Representatives from countries and scientific groups around the world met in Copenhagen and had a party with PowerPoint presentations and movies. Due to the diversity of opinions and lack of consensus about the problem, they reached a token agreement which lacked specifics.
Michael Jackson
The King of Pop died tragically and people suddenly remembered how much they really liked him. Pity it came too late. Say anything you want, but his Music and Dancing were revolutionary.
Nathan Rees Replaced As NSW Premier
The former garbo, after a very unproductive premiership, was replaced by some religious chick. I expect little to change apart from the news photos. State Rail is still a shambles and they still plan to sell off energy retailers for rock bottom prices to raise cash.
As always, I have a tone of half-done articles waiting to be completed. My new year’s resolution is to finish them off and post them.
Here’s Trouble Is Still Alive
Hello Everyone,
Sorry for being incommunicando for the last few weeks. My mother was in the final stages of metastatic breast cancer and she finally passed away earlier this month. I plan to resume posts very shortly.
Here’s Trouble Still Alive
Hello Everyone,
I feel sooo ashamed of myself – 3 months without a post! – what’s been going on?
The answer is that life is going on. I have been very busy living it up and working on some side business projects, intended to help stem the financial challenges posed by the global financial crisis.
Still, it is very bad to break a rhythm – after all, you wouldn’t watch a TV station that broadcasted the daily news randomly on some days, but not others.
I have been hearing more about this Twitter phenomenon – I still consider it to be the social w*ank of the month, like all its predecessors Facebook, MySpace, Friendster etc, but it is growing strongly and I do see a few ways in which it can be convenient – mainly because it encourages brevity – only 140 characters per ‘tweet’, so I have decided to give it a whirl.
When I am too busy to write a full-fledged post, I will instead post a tweet. My twitter address is:
http://twitter.com/heres_trouble
Latest tweets are now visible in the sidebar widget underneath the login form.
I intend for the bulk of future Here’s Trouble’s tweets to address common, every-day news and banality whereas blog posts will be aimed at creating timeless content – the bulk of this blog’s most viewed posts appear to be the latter.
Season’s Greetings
Here’s Trouble wishes all of you the best for the Holiday season, and a retun to prosperity in the New Year.
Help your friends and family, and accept help from them. You will achieve more and have a greater impact than any politician or capitalist.
New Appearance
You may have noticed that the appearance of the blog has changed – I am testing new themes for Here’s Trouble, as I was never fond of the default ‘Kubrick theme’ that comes with WordPress. This current one is a 3-column theme called ‘Revolution Code Blue’ by Brian Gardner.
What do you think ot this theme ? Please leave a comment here or on the contact page.
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