Times are tough all over

[Aliantha]

I think it's pretty fair to say that most economies in the world have been doing the same as America. These types of trends do tend to be global which is why recessions and depressions do tend to be global. I would suggest that if the US economy had remained stable, many other economies world wide would have done also. obviously that's simply because the US economy is so large and effects all other economies, particularly those running under the same rules.

Having a conservative government that was living out of Bush's pocket definitely contributed to our problems here.

Fuel prices have been much higher in Australia than the US for a long time, as have interest rates. Where your reserve bank dropped interest rates to try and avert the crisis in order to prop up the economy, ours increased them in order to gain some control.

I'm not a financial expert. I simply pay attention to what's going on. Not all of our issues here are because of the US market, but you'd be a fool if you didn't agree that it was part of the problem.

I think we'll come out of this ok in the end, mainly because we do have a huge export industry linked to energy resources, and we all know the world needs energy.