Putting The Riot Back Into Patriot…

Now when I say “riot” I’m using it in the sense of lots of laughs rather than the ones that are taking place in the United States… Although there’s certainly things that could give you lots of laughs if you can just avoid crying…

If you saw any of the Pete Hegseth/Donald Trump address to the generals, then you’d have certainly been just as amused as the generals themselves were. There was a lot of laughter after Trump told them

“I never walked into a room so silent before. If you want to applaud, you applaud. You can do anything you want. If you don’t like what I’m saying, you can leave the room. But, there goes your rank and there goes your future.”

Hilarious.

But not as funny as Petey telling them about the benefits of good grooming and how he didn’t want “fat generals”…

If there’s a military coup in the next week, I can hear the leaders announcing that it was because they were following orders about there being no fat leaders and the President had just consumed one hamburger too many…

Anyway, enough about the USA, which is going to be just fine. We’ve all been asked by someone in the IT department if we’ve tried turning the computer off and on to make the problem go away, and that’s exactly what’s happening this week. I just hear on the news that country is about to have “a shutdown”, so hopefully when they turn it back on things will be just fine.

However here in Australia we have the disaster of the first home buyers scheme where the Federal Government is covering 15% of the mortgage insurance which will enable some lucky people to buy on 5% deposit which will, of course, drive up prices.

As to how much they’ll push up prices, it depends on who you ask. Treasury says, “Not much”, but various economists are telling us that Treasury often gets things wrong, whereas economists are much more likely to get things right. I mean you only have to look at the predictions on inflation which economists told us a couple of years ago that Treasury forecasts were far too optimistic and we wouldn’t see interest rate cuts for quite a while. And the economists would have been right, if it wasn’t for the fact that they got their timing wrong. Sort of like the punter that tells you that their horse would have won the Melbourne Cup if the race went for another lap. And interest rates. The economists all predicted one in July and they were half right because – while there wasn’t a cut – they did go down in August, which was going to be followed by several more later in the year… unless the next move is up, but that won’t be until next year unless things change…

Now I’m no expert but it did strike me that the idea that people would borrow far too much and get themselves into trouble overlooks two basic things:

1. The banks have fairly strict lending criteria. Just because you have a $50,000 deposit, that doesn’t mean that they’ll lend you $950,000 plus that you’ll need to seal the deal on a million dollar property. You’ll need to have a reasonable income to service that sort of debt. A couple on $165000 would only be able to borrow about $850,000, so the idea that people will be borrowing enormous sums and pushing the prices up dramatically seems to overlook the fact that most of the properties are already out of reach for most first time buyers. (I also just realised that you might infer that I don’t think $850,000 is an enormous sum which just shows how silly it all is!)
2. If the expert argument is that the scheme is going to be pushing up the prices by quite a bit, then it’s hard to see how people are “getting themselves into trouble”. Yes, there is a problem with negative equity sometimes, but that’s more likely in a time when house prices are stagnant.

Whatever, it seems like it may help a handful of people get into their own home but I suspect that it might have been better if it had been targeted to people building a new dwelling.

Of course it would be nice if the Opposition were actually prepared to acknowledge that the whole housing thing is a wicked problem which needs people working together rather than throwing stones at immigrants… Mm, as I wrote the other day, remember when it was the so-called “illegal immigrants” that we were meant to be annoyed about and we should celebrate those who came here “legally” and “didn’t jump the queue”…

Still I can’t wait for Hastie to take over and release his policy on Australian built cars which should fix all our problems. I guess we need a big tax on all imported cars to help our industry set up.

Apparently, Andrew found Jesus in the US… I didn’t even know that he was lost.

On a side note, I saw this headline pop up.

Now, I find it strange that The Australian should be running such an article when every article I’ve even had the pleasure of reading in that patriotically named newspaper has always been about how there’s too much government spending and how Labor and Coalition MPs should be doing everything they can to eliminate revenue side of the Budget which, of course, necessitates a reduction in wasteful things like Health and Education and Disability Support and unemployment benefits. Yet here they are: encouraging tricks to boost pension entitlements.

Didn’t they hear Hockey: “The age of entitlement is over…”

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