When the then Prime Minister Paul Keating warned 18 years ago that Australia faced becoming a “banana republic”, he could well have used the experience of Spain to illustrate his warning.In 1986 Australia’s foreign debt was around $78 billion, now it is $403 billion.In his historic treatise, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, David Landers expressed his concern at the growing foreign debt of today’s United States – Australia’s is proportionately worse – and warned that, ultimately, its fate coul…
