Studying the field from the inside rail

Rob Ferguson, chairman of litigation funder IMF Australia and keen follower of the hayburners talks to Alan Kohler on Inside Business;

ALAN KOHLER: So what do you think is the outlook now for the global economy and Australia's?

ROB FERGUSON: Well, Australia is in better shape but we are part of the world and we can get sucked down like the rest of the world. The rest of the world's in a horrible mess. In particular Europe is in a disastrous situation, Japan's in a very bad situation. In particular the exporters are in a very bad position, Japan, Germany, China, their economies are going down a lot faster than the rest of the world and there is this problem that they don't have domestic demand enough to sustain their economies and I think that that problem is here for a long time. The banking problems seem to be maybe improving and maybe there's progress being made on that front but there's still a lot of damage to be fixed up and as for the stock market, the stock market does anticipate things before they actually turn around and so maybe what we're seeing now is some sort of base in the stock market.

ALAN KOHLER: Are you calling the bottom?

ROB FERGUSON: No, I'm not calling the bottom but the stock market will be going up when everything's still going to hell in a hand basket. That's how stock markets work. It normally goes up with everybody getting used to bad news and maybe that's what we've seen lately.