Your say: which PM was economic king?

That more secure position would've cost us a fair bit of freedom under his self-guided regime. Rudd was the riskier choice and, I must say, he is doing much, much better than I expected. However one of the most powerful (home-based) influences on the Australian econemy remains the national bank. The people who run it have AT LEAST as much influence on the econemy as the government. What I would like to know is, why don't we, the people, get to elect the people who run the national bank and have to live under the economic conditions they impose? In a democratic country like ours, I believe that the people should be able to choose who gets to play such a pivital role in our national econemy. And frankly, I would relish the opportunity to elect a completely different mob of people for the job. The mob that were calling the shots there from about Aug07-Sep08 played a large part in forming our current problems.

Australian's that write stupid comments like all the above,should stop thier never ending whingeing.And grow up.Know wonder kids in Australia are out of control,when their parents have a mentality of a 10 year old.

Howard did. We had a huge Surplus when he left government. In my own life I figure I managed well when I have money to save and invest and pay my debts.

Labour seems to be a spending government ,,,,,, Liberals seem to be the earning government . seems a recession is not something controlled by governments but the world economy ,, so why do governments ( apart from trying to boost their political points ) just stay out of the whole affair ? Australia is a small population , I doubt we even rate on the scale of world events .

I personally think that the Rudd government is doing the best job under very difficult international conditions. We tend to be critical of governments who are constrained in the intervention that they can legislate to bring about economic change. Keep up the good work Kevin!

John Howard was the best economic manager Australia has ever had by a mile. Our entire government debt was paid off in 2006. The very last dollar. Compare that to previous governments, or governments overseas. There is no competition. Not even close.

The right side of Australian politics has always been much better financial managers, but they have always had very poor social policies as they seldom effected by the bad policies they create. They tend to live in ivory towers and to be contemptuous of those less fortunate. The left side of politics tends to go overboard with the social policies, even to the extent of a weird 'Robbing Hood syndrome' they take from the worker to give to the bludger. They couldn't make a quid from running a brothel in a navy yard. History has shown that it has ever been thus, The Libs create the surplus and Labour leaves the country in deficit up to the eyeballs. The current lot may be different, If Krudd can get rid of the unions the the ALP might become a truly legitimate political paty, as it exists, the ALP is influenced by faceless men who were never ellected by the people, they are thugs installed to defend corrupt minority groups for their own intersts. The ALP could be good, it isn't as it is.

Anyone who thinks this financial crisis began in Australia and can be attributed to either Ruddy or Howard simply wouldn't know what day it is. It can be argued though, that Howard and Costello helped exaccerbate the current situation by cutting taxes and increasing the public sector while inflation was on the rise. It forced the reserve bank to increase interest rates. If anything, they should have slashed the budget and maybe even increased taxes. Unpopular, yes, but it would have slowed our rate of borrowing. As citizens, we need to reflect on the role we play in economics. We criticize governments when they spend too much, but as individuals we were living beyond our means. I don't mean to seem callous or heartless, but to those people suffering debt stress, it was the debt stress you had to have.

Question. What do you think will happen if you guarantee deposits in some financial entities but not in others?Correct..funds will flow from the non-guaranteed to the guaranteed entities. Simple really.The result? Non-guaranteed entities freeze all redemptions. That's right, its your life savings and you can't touch it till God know's when. Swan's response? Go to Centrelink! What a goose.Centrelink's response? The patently obvious "go away". Did Krudd and Swan really consider the obvious effect of this 100% guarantee?? Obviously not. And these are the people running the country. God help us.

History has a habit of repeating itself and we always make the mistake of not learning and applying the lessons. Before lasts year election Peter Costello had been warning the country that something big was going to happen in the Financial markets. Costello arguably has to be the best Economic Manager this country has seen to date. What has taken the former Liberal Government years to accumulate a National Surplus has taken Kevin 07 and his wacky sidekick Swan 12 months to *** away in poor economic management. By handing out 10 billion dollars it will give impedus to the Australian ecomony for only a short time of about a few months . Now the real question has to be asked and it is this what is going to happen in Feb or March next year??? What Swan and Rudd have grossly failed to do is to restore confidence in the Markets for investment. I suppose when you elect amateurs what more can you expect. Kevin 07, Recession 08 Depression 09.