But Hong Kong has been running surpluses for a long time, he says.
Even foundation trusts, whose status depends on their effective management and which have been making surpluses until this year, are starting to report serious overspends.
Not the fiscal hard heads who wish for smaller government, budget surpluses and low or no debt, nor the government interventionists who reckon fiscal policy can deliver full employment and ongoing prosperity.
That is a guilty conscience...The 2012 Budget in particular which the member for Lilley introduced by declaring the four years of surpluses they announced tonight.
When fiscal consolidation turns on a predetermined debt ratio to be achieved at a predetermined point in the future, the primary surpluses needed to hit those targets are such that the effect on the private sector undermines the assumed growth rates and thus derails the planned fiscal path.
Then, under arbitrary assumptions regarding growth rates, inflation, privatisation receipts, and so forth, they compute what primary surpluses are necessary in every year, working backward to the present.
As a social enterprise, the new organisation will be able to use any surpluses to fund further service improvements or invest in other community facilities.
Almost 370 municipal electricity schemes supplied relatively cheap power to the urban population, using surpluses for investment rather than dividends to shareholders.
"A number of our subsidiaries are generating surpluses, and those surpluses are given as charitable gifts to the university to enable it to carry on being a university.
Instead, we should map out a forward-looking plan based on reasonable assumptions about the primary surpluses consistent with the rates of output growth, net investment, and export expansion that can stabilise Greece's economy and debt ratio.
I can say today that government must ensure that debt continues to fall as a percentage of GDP, including using surpluses in good years for this purpose.
