Much attention is now focused on the current catalogue of defective policy decisions by Australia’s Federal Government.
July 4th marks the 13th anniversary of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) announcing that they had sold off 167 tonnes of gold (2/3rd of Australia’s gold reserves – click here for a full report on the 10th anniversary and see page 5).
Just updating the loss inflicted by this decision and the ultimate speculation in Thai Baht at the time of the Asian currency crisis, gives us a ‘cost to the nation’ of $5.275 billion (difference between gold price then and now) + $4.8 billion on ‘cross currency swaps’; the loss totalling $10.075 billion.
So this is another example of a ‘bad policy executed to perfection’.
So the challenge remains for our financial commentators and analysts to remain ever vigilant for further costly blunders and expose them as we enter the run-up to the Federal Election.
We are happy to receive further examples from you, to add to our ever expanding collection.
for lenin, a central bank and control over paper money were a central plank to the communist agenda. that the rba regularly gets it wrong is a natural and essential consequence of central planning in general and should surprise no one. should be wound up, like the wool board. how much wealthier we’d be with a specie money regime, and no special banking charters or concessions.
another monumental error was the states handing over the income tax “temporarily” for the wartime emergency.