By: Barry Soper | Wednesday, May 09, 2012 6:17 AM

It's at this time of the year you're bamboozled with figures and never ending reports on the state of the economy.

It's always the case in the leadup to the Budget. The politicians do what they do best, jawbone, and with the Dipton Drawler Bill English's fourth effort in a couple of weeks time the rhetoric's being revved up.

The latest set of figures to be dumped on us are the Crown accounts and not surprisingly they highlight just how wrong Treasury got it again. They're to the economy what the meteorological service is to the weather, you take their predictions with a grain of salt.

The latest figures show us just how wrong the Government's claims were that its tax cuts verses a rise in the GST would be fiscally neutral, in other words that one would cancel out the other.

The taxman's getting much less than forecast from the corporates and from GST and the men in charge of the economic tiller seem to be pointing it in different directions.

State Homie John Key says the GST take's down because households are being more thrifty, putting their spare cash in the piggy bank. But The Drawler says it's down because households are shifty, along with the ground in the City of Silt. Big GST refunds are being doled out when insurance pay outs are made.

But at least they're singing from the same song sheet when it comes to one thing, that the books will be back in the black in three years time, even though Treasury itself isn't so sure. Perhaps their confidence in themselves just goes to show how much faith they're putting in the Treasury predictions, and probably with good reason.

Today we have another lot of figures flowing from number crunchers on the opposite side of The Terrace from Treasury, the Reserve Bank's financial stability report, or how the demented financial reef fish are finding the big pond at the moment.

In the last one six months ago they were worried about the possibility of Greece defaulting and how that'll affect other heavily indebted nations, like ours. With an inconclusive election there last weekend they'll be even more worried and with a Socialist President in France who doesn't seem terribly keen on cutting his country's cloth, they'll be apoplectic!