PBS reporter Stuart Cohen “thinks” that what has kept Australia’s “unemployment rate just over 5 percent,” and that country’s economy still humming,” is, in part, “government spending”—that has “helped keep Australia out of recession.”

“PETER HARTCHER, political editor, of he Sydney Morning Herald,” believes the same: “The big and searing experience out of this was that, when there was a global financial crisis, and suddenly countries everywhere were in trouble, the Australian government had enough money in the kitty that it was easily able to enact a massive stimulus massive at least in proportion to our economy.

The consequence is one of the only countries in the world that didn’t have a recession. And this experience has now been burnt into the national consciousness, and it’s put a real premium on getting back to surpluses as quickly as possible.”

[SNIP]

HARTCHER’s right about not overspending. Most people outside Washington DC would think of this as stating the obvious. But it is despite the pursuit of porkulus policies that Oz is not looking as bad as the US. The relative prudent financial management of the country’s affairs has meant that the economy can shoulder some Keynesian mischief without buckling under.

UPDATE I (Aug. 21): For those of you who are interested in events outside the USA (not a common occurrence among Americans, in my experience), here is a dispatch from the frontlines of the Australian election. I’ll provide the name of our lively correspondent, whose style you probably recognize, pending his say-so. UPDATE III (Aug. 22): He is no other than R. J. Stove (read his comment and corrections hereunder):

I woke up this morning to the news that yesterday’s election seems to have resulted in a hung parliament (the first at national level since 1940-1943).

The obnoxious Gillard – “Sickening Excuse For A Woman” (SEFAW for short), as Paul Gottfried calls her – has been given a kick in the teeth, but Tony Abbott’s Liberals (despite gains in Queensland and New South Wales) appear unable to form a majority.

It’s the Green party which is cock-a-hoop, with, I believe, nine senators now (as opposed to five previously) and with gains in the House of Reps (where it had lacked any members at all since the
1990s, if memory serves me).

Last night on TV we had the diverting spectacle of Gillard’s vile Environment Minister Penny Wong, who owes her political clout entirely to being a Chinese lesbian, being upbraided by a Greens candidate for “homophobia.” Frankly, to me the Greens are such cartoonish villains that I can’t work up all that much indignation against them.

If we absolutely must have pro-abort, pro-Third-World-immigration and pro-homosexual-“marriage” politicians at all, I prefer them to be outside rather than inside the Catholic Church or “movement conservatism.”

This is some of the latest media coverage of the poll (complete with a recording of Gillard’s cement-mixer speaking
voice).

[SNIP]

UPDATE II: By comparison, “the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits increased by 12,000 to 500,000 last week, taking economists and the White House by surprise. President Obama, on his way to a 10-day vacation with his family on Martha’s Vineyard, said the report underscores the need for”… yes, more government deficit spending.”