Rates cut

One quarter of one per cent – confirming (again) that Brendan has no power to influence anything. Tip would have got it down a half. If he was in charge. If he could be bothered. But they wouldn’t back him last year, so he’s had enough. You’ll have to beg him to come back.
Then, and [...]

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Oh no he didn’t!

Brendan Nelson – INSERT FOOT HERE:
“And now the Reserve Bank is in a position, in looking forward, where it is so concerned about the state of the Australian economy that it’s forecasting there may be room to reduce interest rates in the future.”

I understand that he has to attempt to criticise the Government and look [...]

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Shared delusions

On this morning’s Sunrise “All Stars” segment, the bobblehead from the Daily Telegraph whose name I have forgotten mentioned that Howard’s “sorry doesn’t mean I apologise” clarification was prompted by a ‘tough’ question from Dennis Youcannahandamanagrandershanahan.
This makes me wonder – did Dennis actually intend to prompt that type of response? I can’t reconcile all of [...]

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"Sorry, but" redux

Because this game of semantics pleases the electorate so much when he’s talking about Aboriginal people:
Mr Howard has repeated that he is sorry for the extra costs borrowers will bear because of the rate rise.
“I said that I was sorry they’d occurred, I don’t think I actually used the word apology, I think there is [...]

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Sorry, but

Best juxtaposition of statements in a piece on the interest rate rise goes to Coorey and Pearlman:
“Mr Howard needs to accept full, unqualified responsibility for his broken promise to the Australian people at the last election that he would keep interest rates at record lows.”
Mr Howard said he was sorry for the rate rise but [...]

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Hypocrisy ahoy!

This is the ad I am seeing repeatedly on TV this evening:

Someone needs to shove Hawke and Keating to the right and include the 22% under Howard.
I don’t know how it will play with voters who might swing to the Coalition, but on the day that rates have risen it only [...]

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Whip it out

Howard continues to engage in the Liberal vs Labor penis-size (a.k.a. interest rate) comparing contest. Two questions:

Which government’s economic reforms broke the back of inflation? (Hint: it’s the government you took over from in 1996, when interest rates were steadily declining).
Under which Treasurer were interest rates at 22%?

UPDATE: On tonight’s ABC News, Alan Kohler reported [...]

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Future Howard

In his desperate bid for reelection, John Howard performs another stunning reversal:
In an interview earlier on Friday morning on Melbourne radio, Mr Howard acknowledged that a pre-election Liberal Party ad in 2004 had promised to keep interest rates at record lows and that had not been achieved.
“That particular advertisement lasted two nights and then it [...]

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Looking further up the road

MegaGeorge points out that the Libs’ advertising appears to be looking further down the road than 24th November. Here is the latest ad he is talking about:

Megalogenis notes that:
What it neglects to mention is the year when this hole is supposed to appear in Labor’s tax scales. It’s five years from [...]

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Tsunami warning system

One of the nice things about an independent central bank is that, if the Treasurer wants to try to interfere with monetary policy for political reasons, he has to do it via the media:
In his first newspaper interview of the campaign, Mr Costello predicted the US economy would weaken in the wake of its subprime [...]

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