Category Archives: USA

7.30 Report on “American mortgage shock waves hit Australia”

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Those of you who missed last night’s 7.30 Report (like myself–I was play­ing ten­nis at the time!) should check the link below:

 Amer­i­can mort­gage shock waves hit Aus­tralia

Apolo­gies again for a tardy update cycle on this blog, but as you can imag­ine, I’m busy as hell right now. When the dust settles–in ear­ly October–I hope to bring every­thing up to date.

I will also be releas­ing a mini-book on debt for the Cen­tre for Pol­i­cy Devel­op­ment on Sep­tem­ber 18th. Venue TBA, but please con­tact the CPD if you’d like to attend. The work­ing title is And Deep­er in Debt…

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Debtwatch No. 10: America’s Ponzi Schemes Unravel

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Named in mock hon­our of Amer­i­ca’s great­est swindler, a Ponzi Scheme is a finan­cial ruse that, for a time,  gen­er­ates appar­ent­ly great returns from an invest­ment that in fact pro­duces noth­ing. Ponzi Schemes ini­tial­ly appear to work because the pro­mot­ers pay ear­ly entrants seem­ing­ly fan­tas­tic returns, by the sim­ple expe­di­ent of giv­ing them mon­ey deposit­ed by lat­er entrants. So long as the Scheme con­tin­ues to grow, it can appear successful–and indeed indi­vid­u­als who get in and out before the Scheme col­laps­es can become fab­u­lous­ly wealthy.


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Household Debt: US vs Australia

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As part of the back­ground to the Late­Line inter­view yes­ter­day, I graphed the US house­hold debt to GDP ratio against the Aus­tralian. All the news recent­ly has been about the sub-prime cri­sis in the States, of course: but guess where house­hold debt has been grow­ing fastest? That’s right, good old Aus­tralia has out-done itself once more. The accom­pa­ny­ing graph­ic tells the sto­ry, which I’ll embell­ish in the next Debt­watch report in ear­ly April.

House­hold Debt to GDP, USA & Aus­tralia

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