Mike's Minute: Our economic decline is alarming

Are you reading about the economy and its performance, or lack of, with the alarm I am?

More and more economists are now predicting a double dip recession. Grant Robertson is already working overtime trying to explain why we have had one already, while the vast majority of the rest of the world hasn’t.

Now he may face the unedifying prospect of having to do it twice. Mind you, he will most likely be out of office by the time all the numbers are in.

Then we get to the Government accounts published last week. They are billions worse than forecast in the Budget.

You remember the Budget? It only came out in late May and it's only early July. It's a deterioration of epic proportions over an exceedingly short period of time.

That, lest we forget, is why we don’t believe a word Treasury says. They are also forecasting growth this year. You can laugh that out of town as well.

Then we get to the income side of the equation. How is the Government earning all the money it is so eager to spend?

The Commodity Price Index fell over 2 percent in June, 2.3 percent to be precise. Meat is down almost 8 percent, lamb specifically fell over 10 percent, beef over 7 percent, forestry is down 3 percent and the Global Dairy Auction went backwards again. So the stuff that makes us money is struggling.

The only thing helping is the value of the dollar, which is falling. That actually isn't a good thing. We want a strong currency, because a strong currency reflects a strong economy. But it, for now in an artificial sort of way, makes things looks slightly better than they really are.

Don’t forget our ever-growing debt is costing more and more to service as well.

So, we are spending more while earning less and pretending, if you listen to Grant, we are in a good position to do so. Which, of course, we are not.

The only other good news, apart from our collapsing currency, might be the fact that the Reserve Bank looks at this mess and decides not to bump interest rates this week.

All in all, it's ugly.

The mismanagement is shocking and the report cards don’t lie. You simply can't run your household, far less an economy, this way.

We are sinking and the tragedy is, once the clowns who got us in this mess are gone, we are the ones picking up the pieces and paying off the bills.

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