Debt and Destruction

Figures released in the silly season reveal that Australians are up to their ears and beyond in hock.

Figures released by the Reserve bank show that debt held by the household sector is somewhere north of a trillion dollars (That's $1,200,000,000,000.00), equaling our (very) Gross Domestic Product.

I predicted back in January 2008, incorrectly as it turns out, that the Global Financial Crisis would deliver a credit squeeze. The bailout of the banking sector didn't allow this, and the short term stimulus activity meant people could keep on racking up debt. This has continued to fuel an asset bubble. People are *over* the GFC, and, despite sluggish seasonal sales figures, appear to be tucking into business as usual with "no interest and nothing to pay until 2011", as Gerry Harvey puts it.

How long they expect this to go on before it begins to cause serious pain in the household sector is beyond me. We have created a population bonded in servitude to credit providers. The household sector is now owned by (largely) the big four banks - and, Australians being Australians, they will do what they are told.

We are two nations. A corporate nation and a household nation. The corporate nation drives the political and economic agenda and the household nation is left sucking on the social agenda.

When Rudd beams his message into wide screen TVs bought on easy credit into the loungerooms of the country he talks in the language of the social agenda. He says things that households want to hear. It's all very fluffy and aimed at Mr and Mrs McMansion and their 2.2 kids.

When he acts, he acts on behalf of the corporate nation, and delivers on an economic agenda that addresses the needs of the corporate nation. Bank guarantees, award stripping (or "streamlining" as the neo-liberal Gillard calls it), uranium mining and handouts for polluters in the name of carbon reduction are all par for the course. Add to this a looming assault on the nation's underclass through a tightening of welfare and runaway grocery prices and you start to see a picture where Rudd is no friend to the working stiffs, and possibly the best successor Howard's supporters from the big end of town could have hoped for.

Unfortunately their partisan blindness paints Rudd as a dangerous Marxist, so they are left with the debilitating Tony Abbott as their champion. But even Turnbull could see Rudd was open to some very accommodating, corporate friendly politics.

So households end up with three fifths of sweet truck all while much largesse is divested to our friends in the ASX 200, and any number of overseas multinationals.

And because Rudd is brand ALP there are many traitorous swine on the left that will suck it up while every month it becomes harder and harder to keep the good people at Visa happy.

Oh, for a champion of the household nation.