Perhaps the Government Could Hold an Enquiry into Its Own Spending...

It's the typical way government does things. To cover up the facts of its own wasteful spending, it turns the spotlight on others. It's happening again...

Call it whatever you like.

Bait and switch…

A diversion…

Mis- or disinformation.

It doesn't matter.

It's all the same. It's the government doing what it does.

It blames others for things that aren't even one-tenth as bad as what the government gets up to…

As reported by the Australian Business Journal:

‘The federal government is set to provide the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) with an additional $2.1 million in funding to crack down on excessive purchase surcharges.

‘This move comes as part of a broader initiative to address concerns over the fees consumers face when using debit cards or digital payment methods.

‘Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers announced that, beginning January 1, 2026, the government is prepared to ban debit card surcharges, pending the development of “safeguards” and a comprehensive review by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA).’

A report from ABC notes that ‘Australians lose nearly $1 billion a year to card surcharges.’

That’s the ‘switch’ in the ‘bait and switch'.

As for the ‘bait’… we can reference the Australian Financial Review from earlier this year:

‘Annual interest payments on Australian government debt will surge almost 60 per cent to $35 billion in the next four years as deeper deficits add to the borrowing task.’

So there you have it.

Banks charge consumers around $1 billion a year in surcharges.

Meanwhile, the federal government will charge Australian taxpayers $35 billion a year in interest costs within the next four years.

But the government can’t allow the public to think it's ripping them off .. it has to divert attention.

Of course, it goes much further than that.

Forget the $35 billion the government rips off taxpayers in interest costs.

The rip-off extends to the $700 billion in taxes the government takes from the public each year.

It would be more useful to have an enquiry into that… rather than the relative peanuts the banks charge in surcharges.

But don't ever expect that to happen.

And oh, after all that, just to insult the taxpayer even more, it takes another $2.1 million of taxpayer money to give it to the ACCC to run the enquiry.

As we keep explaining, governments worldwide are in a cycle of never-ending spending.

This is why inflation remains such a big threat. It's the only way it can keep the spending going.

Will it ever run out of money?

Buy gold.

We look forward to seeing you back here tomorrow.

Kris Sayce

Editor, Crack of Doom

Issue 47 of 10,000

(We believe in the importance of setting goals. And we figure what better way than to set a big goal from the beginning. If all goes to plan, our final issue of Crack of Doom will be sometime in the 2060’s!)

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