It's urging the Treasurer Wayne Swan to commit to implementing reforms in the May budget. 

 

“Sort of measures that the government really does need to embrace are some of the big measures that... that people would actually see benefit from. That includes talking with the state's government to get rid of  stamp duty on homes, to get rid of insurance duties, ah, to look at further reforms at the Henry Review and... and things can be planned now for implementation in a couple of years.”

 

Robert Jamaica from the Tax Institute.

 

US President Barack Obama is warning Congress jobs will be lost if deep budget cuts were allowed to take effect next week. 

 

President Obama likened the 85-billion-dollar in cuts to taking a meat cleaver to the deficit.

 

“These cuts are not smart. They are not fair. They will hurt our economy. They'll add hundreds of thousands of Americans to the unemployment rolls. This is not an abstraction. People will lose their jobs.”

 

Barack Obama there. Well, let's take a look at the markets.

 

And stocks in US are around half a per cent higher. In London, the FTSE rose one per cent. 

 

To commodity prices.

 

West Texas Crude is trading at 97 US dollars a barrel. Tapis Crude is trading at 123 US dollars a barrel. And gold is worth 1605 US dollars an ounce.

 

The Australian dollar is buying 104 US cents, 77 Euro cents and 67 per cent, cen(error in speaking) pence sterling.