The big impact China is having is through its resources demand. They are spraying money into Australia by buying huge volumes of our resources at top dollar, while the rest of the world is in recession.

And guess whose money is propping up prices in that housing bubble?

“The federal government relaxed its foreign investment rules for residential property early last year. While the controlling body, the Foreign Investment Review Board, does not disclose the exact number of sales to overseas investors, anecdotal reports from would-be local buyers and real estate agents across the country point to a surge in spending from Asia – particularly mainland China. Agents are also setting up offices in China and arranging ”property tourism” to tap the demand.”

“Melbourne real estate agents in the eastern suburbs report that up to half the buyers this year have been part-time residents from China, Hong Kong or Taiwan, or Asian companies buying accommodation for their staff…auctions in both Mandarin and English

We’re importing slops of the property speculation bubble from Shanghai Beijing etc: prices are so high there, our houses are bargain. Fly in for the saturday auctions, Buy up, and Fly out. Repeat several times a year. A temporary visa is good enough.

If I wasn’t so busy right now moving amber fluids through my body, I’d be inspired to respond.

I’ve always thought one of the great things about the Aus blogosphere, regardless of ideology or attitude, is how it has provided a great vent for the deep-seated Australian love of wordplay, posey and balladeering.

I’ll have to read your parody more carefully before commenting. Meanwhile thanks for pointing me back to the original poem and Wilfrid Owen whom I find so searingly honest and anti-war that I couldn’t imagine myself parodying anything of his. Maybe an alter ego….

His contemporary, Siegfried Sasson now, a satirist of the bitterest not humorous kind, almost begs parody or exploitation, so straightforward are his structures and rhymes. Yet his messsage is grim. In a sense he makes the point I should have made to Rob @ 77 about the use of verse and satire whether humorous or not in political debate.

Instead I just couldn’t resist the opportunity for another ‘bon mot’. Sorry, Rob, I wasn’t at all personally put out! Oh, the irony! I’ll have to find out how to use those Smiley gadgets.

Meanwhile back to satire at its best. How powerful, yet straightforward, is this?

Arms and the Man by Siegfried Sasson, WW I poet and decorated war hero.

Young Croesus went to pay his call
On Colonel Sawbones, Caxton Hall:
And, though his wound was healed and mended,
He hoped he’d get his leave extended.

The waiting-room was dark and bare.
He eyed a neat-framed notice there
Above the fireplace hung to show
Disabled heroes where to go
For arms and legs; with scale of price,
And words of dignified advice
How officers could get them free.

Elbow or shoulder, hip or knee,
Two arms, two legs, though all were lost,
They’d be restored him free of cost.
Then a Girl Guide looked to say,
‘Will Captain Croesus come this way?

Doesn’t that point to someone else buying?

Unless I’m very much mistaken China became our largest export market several years ago. Our dependence in China deepened in 2009 because exports of raw materials to most countries slumped, but export volumes to China grew rapidly.

Check out these extraordinary graphs of Chinese import volumes. Note that the huge spikes took place in the depths of the GFC. At the same time, China’s exports (to the US, Europe, Japan etc) slumped 20-25%. Is that not curious to say the least?

But back to debt. This is how the Australian economy currently works:
- We dig up rocks and sell them almost exclusively to China
- We use much of this income stream to borrow overseas (private debt=150% of GDP)
- We use this credit to invest in an unproductive asset, namely existing housing stock

Abbot’s lament
Dulce Et Decorum Est
Bent double, like old boxers under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed Barnaby’s sludge,
Till on the taunting media we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Joe marched asleep. Bronwyn had lost her boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the bells
Of disappointed doorstops that dropped behind.

Debt! Debt! Quick, boys!– An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy earmuffs just in time;
But Barnaby was still yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.–
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the debt truck that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the garbage
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, unfathomable claims on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

(apologies to Wilfred Owen)

- “Our entire economy now pivots on just two pillars: resources and property. Not just any property, but second-hand property”

- “we have now built our prosperity on an extraordinarily narrow base: China directly and indirectly, and lending for increasingly expensive second-hand homes”

- “In the mid-1990s … For every dollar spent on a new house, three went on a second-hand one. Today, for every dollar that goes on a new house, five go on second-hand ones”

- “In 1989 … Commercial lending was more than 50 per cent higher [than home loans] at $90bn. Now it’s reversed. Bank commercial loans of $630bn are swamped by home loans of $910bn”

- “And where exactly do the banks get the money for their lending? Mostly from you as depositors, but nearly $500bn has come from foreign investors”

Australia: Resource income leveraged up and splurged on existing housing stock.