Teflon John Key today steps into the pussycats' den. There'll be no sucking the teeth with this audience, they'll be purring as he outlines where he's taken the economy from and where he hopes it'll be in the future, kicked along with his buddy Bill English's Budget next month.

This time last year the Beehive burglars were crowing about how they would be returning the country from red to black which in political terms would be from Labour to New Zealand First. But in economic terms it's from deficit to surplus.

It was their skite about how well they were doing with our money, what great economic stewards they are and how Teflon John's the lead singer in the rock star economy hitting all the right notes. Well as the music plays on at the business lunch in the capital there are just a few things about this economy that in reality sound more the stylise scratching across the vinyl.

It won't have escaped those at the tables who rely on exports as their bread and butter when they reflect on what a strengthening dollar against the Aussie means to them. It's almost at parity now, but even when it was trading at 95 cents to the Aussie, export earnings had taken a six hundred million buck hit as it's continued to grow in strength over the past three years.

And before they clap their hands red at lunch today they should also reflect on the largely forgotten cost of being a rock star.

As the rest of the world's economies were collapsing, borrower Bill was on the blower to the banks, bringing in the money to soften the blow here. When the Tory's won the Treasury benches back in 2008 the debt compared to our economy's worth was standing at 17 percent, today it's more than double at 36 percent.

Reading the last figure available the cost of servicing that debt, which has grown from ten billion to more than 60 billion, is close to four billion bucks a year, or more than we spend on the cops and early childhood education combined.

If you likened the economy to the household, the debt is the mortgage and balancing the books is being able to live on what you have after that. To be in surplus then is having a bit left over after the day to day bills are met.

But the mortgage still has to be paid back and that'll be the difference between the rock star and a hard place!