“Australia has
recorded its worst trade performance in 50 years, despite soaring commodity
prices.” This catastrophic state of affairs is reported by David Uren for The
Oz. “The volume of goods shipping
overseas has risen just 1.3% annually in the past five years, with
exports stagnating in more than half the nation’s top 20 markets, including
Japan, Korea, the US and Taiwan.”

The people at the commanding heights
of our economy have been (unsuccessfully) forecasting a strong recovery of
exports for several years now. The Canberra/Martin Place view is the concern
for the current account deficit (CAD) is old fashioned nonsense. The bright new
age view is “she’ll be right mates”.

Well, Henry’s got to say “she won’t
be right mates”. Despite our manifestly good general economic performance, the
current excess of imports over exports cannot
continue…

Read on here at Henry Thornton.

Also, with thanks to the IPA, we
republish Alan Moran’s article “Price and Planning: The state of the housing
industry” here. (Warning: this article is exclusive to Goldmembers)