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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GraceZ who wrote (30320)	4/29/2005 6:39:39 AM
From: KyrosL	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 306849

Did you actually look at the population figures Yes. From 1976 to now US population grew 35%, Australian population 47%. Here is paper that shows 1976 Aussie population to be 13.5 million -- today it's very close to 20 million. demography.anu.edu.au By the way my interest in Australia has a selfish component, since I have FAX in my portfolio, a bond fund with many Aussie bonds. As far as individual indebtedness goes, it appears that Australians are as indebted as Americans. The big difference is the debt level of the Australian government and the actions of the Aussie reserve bank: - their public debt is less than 10% of GDP and is soon going to zero. They routinely run government budget surpluses. - they have NO long term social security liabilities. Their pensions are private. The government mandates contributions by all the employers which right now stand at 9%. The government runs a means tested pension scheme for the poor. - their national health care is half as expensive to run as the US. The Aussie government spends as much as the US government per capita for health care, but (miracle of miracles!) it manages to insure ALL of the Australians, whereas the US government only manages to insure the old, the poor and the veterans with the same per capita expenditure. - Last but not least, their reserve bank actually fights asset bubbles. They have raised short term interest rates to 5.5%, considerably above their inflation, specifically to fight their housing bubble.