While Australia’s stock market lost 59 percent and a 5.7 percent unemployment rate also assailed the country, it is ‘the only developed country to avoid technical recession.’ Australia has breezed through the global economic downturn ahead of any other developed country.

The country’s ‘stock market has bounced back almost 30 percent since mid-July, home prices are actually higher now than in the summer of 2007,’ and the country’s central bank raised interest rate by 0.25 percent very recently – sending the signal that the current primary concern has moved to inflation, and no longer growth.

Here are the components of the secret strategy that helped Australia have the easiest time through the global recession, and also the reasons why it managed to escape the doldrums the earliest:

Over the past decade, Australia shifted much of its exports to China. It used to export heavily to the US and the UK, two countries that really felt the economic downturn, making them import less during the recession.

Australia’s ‘overall market for loans is modest.’ Hypercredit has just not been the thing in Australia. Also, the country’s population grew by 2.1 percent before March 2009 through reproduction and immigration – more people, more output. Consequently, the burgeoning population kept a consistent demand for housing, thereby ‘cushioning home prices.’

Australia does offer the other developed countries a glimpse into how recovery from the recession looks like. And the real secret? It’s not a uniquely Australian strategy: the country borrowed lots of money to stimulate the economy.

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Via BNET