On 4/8/2024 at 12:04 PM, TroubleandGrumpy said:

True - cannot argue with that sentiment.  But I can assure you China needs our exports a lot more then we need their imports.  Even with all the extremely negative and provocative statements made by the previous Federal Govt, China merely slapped us a little bit.  Remember, India is closer and things there are extremely cheap - not as cheap as Chine but way cheaper than making it at home - we have alternatives, China really does not have an easy alternative to most of what we export to them - Iron Ore, Petroleum and Minerals. 

All fair points, but China has been stockpiling a lot.  Probably not for a war, but so they can turn off the tap for a while and watch us beg for them to come back to the table.  Either that, or they sell our own raw product back to us at double what they paid for it, because it will cost triple in Australia. 

 

During the GFC China basically stopped Australia going into a deep recession,  but they beat us down to the absolute rock bottom price on everything. 

 

Many companies are now looking for an alternative to China, mainly due to China's theft of intellectual property.  India is doing ok out of this, so is Vietnam.  

 

It goes back to that very basic example that we send them a few tons of iron ore and they send it back as a car.  Who made the most money out of the deal? 

 

Look at gas in Australia at the moment.  Other countries are willing to pay a lot more than Aussies for it, so the companies sent it overseas which caused more demand in Australia and  shortages, so the price went up. 

 

Twenty years ago Australia had some of the cheapest electricity in the world, and now we are one of the most expensive, yet we have so much mineral wealth.  The states have privatized just about everything.  There's nothing much left to sell off.    

Getting better and better - 24.5 at the moment - back to 30 one day??

On 6/3/2024 at 3:16 AM, TroubleandGrumpy said:

Getting better and better - 24.5 at the moment - back to 30 one day??

How wrong you were.