Chris' Rant About the Economy and Stupidity in Government

Having a global currency would simply not work. Take the example of the European Union and the global financial crisis. Economies sometimes require action by their central banks selling or buying government bonds to alter the interest rates and control the price of a currency versus other currencies. During the global financial crisis Greece was dire circumstances - their economy had collapsed but there was no way for its currency to drop and rescue the country through promoting investment because their currency was so cheap. Their currency can't go down because it is a shared currency.

Bitcoin or gold do not make good currencies as their prices fluctuate wildly and both tend to go up dramatically over a long period. What this causes is something called deflation which is pretty much the same as putting an economy through a blender. If you have a currency that is continuously going up in price, why would you buy something if you can buy more of it the next day? Nobody spends money and economies stagnate and collapse. Workers get sacked as you don't need to bother making money if your cash reserves are going up anyway.

People get very caught up in currencies and the financial sector - are they to blame for endangering our planet? It's not money that is evil it's what people do with it - or don't do. Money in government is the problem lobbyists, Industry and other vested interests just have too much pull in government. During the Howard era pissing taxpayers dollars up against the wall Introducing the baby bonus, the first home buyers grant, giving money to private schools that don't need it - we would have had so many more options when the global financial crisis hit. At the end of the Howard era and the beginning of Rudd / Gillard - allowing the mining sector to grow too large and too fast pushing up the dollar, creating competition for jobs, both helping to destroy the manufacturing sector.

Government after government both Liberal and Labour have failed to introduce necessary financial reform. One example, that I have mentioned on several occasions, failing to crack down on the negative gearing of investment properties. This led to a boom in the number of investment properties in our capital cities which helped to push up property prices. Then we had the first home buyers grant which brought even more people into the market pushing up prices still further.

Many of the problems we are facing now were predicted decades ago, but a combination of lobbyists, vested interests, disinformation and good old garden variety human stupidity have got in the way of fixing them before they became an issue.