Posted on 07/19/2015 2:51:40 PM PDT by BlopAndStop
Last month Gina Rinehart, Australias richest woman and matriarch of Perths Hancock mining dynasty delivered an unwelcome shock to her workers in Western Australia: accept a possible 10pc pay cut or face the risk of future redundancies.
Ms Rinehart, whose family have accumulated vast wealth from iron ore mining, has seen her fortune dwindle since commodity prices began their inexorable slide last year. The Australian mining mogul has seen her estimated wealth collapse to around $11bn (£7bn) from a fortune that was thought to be worth around $30bn just three years ago.
This colossal collapse in wealth is symptomatic of the wider economic problem now facing Australia, which for years has been known as the lucky country due to its preponderance in natural resources such as iron ore, coal and gold. During the boom years of the so-called commodities super cycle when China couldnt buy enough of everything that Australia dug out of the ground, the countrys economy resembled oil-rich Saudi Arabia.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
The economy is doing great. Just ask the government and CNBC. The numbers are great. Google is great.
What could possibly go wrong. And anyway...its China.
(Do I need to add a sarcasm tag?)
Silly headline. Australia issues and controls the Australian dollar. A commodities crash might cause hard times in Australia, cause devaluation of the Australian dollar against other currencies, raise borrowing costs for the Australian government and Australian businesses , but it can’t turn it “into a new Greece”.
“The Lucky Country” was coined not as a compliment. It is the title of a book published in the 1960s that described an Australia whose circumstances allowed it to become wealthy while resting on its laurels and enjoying the fruits of others’ innovation and technology (as this article describes), and claims that this created a culture of complacency and parochialism.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lucky_Country
I’ve been hearing there’s about to be a big crash. I have to admit I’m starting to believe it won’t happen in my lifetime. I’m 64.
Is this another case of people and governments spending wildly when times were good? Governments spend more when times are good, and insist they need to spend more when times are bad. Either way, taxpayers lose.
Poor ladyin the story... Only a few billion left? Hope she isn’t subsisting on pork ‘n beans.
Yeah, I guess it could be tough only having $11 billion.
Have you seen the price of arugula lately?
Oh, and WalMart had Pork ‘n’ Beans for 50 cents a can the other day. That might help her out.
Cheap hot dogs were 88 cents a package.
Wonder if she would be willing to adopt me? Guess not, since she’s so po’ now.
I like the idea. Probably enough cash for all of us!
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