A recent Op Ed originally published in the business pages of the Melbourne Age, 15th December 2010. The re-emergence of the mining boom, temporarily de-railed by the global financial crisis, as a key driver of Australia’s economic prospects has been accompanied by a revival of...
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This is an article of mine that was originally published in the Melbourne Age on 29th November 2010. Saturday’s election of a Coalition government is unlikely to have much impact on Victoria’s economic direction. As The Age’s economics editor Tim Colebatch noted last Friday, t...
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Saul's recent column in the Age - I'm responsible for the headline (NG). For a country which accounts for less than 0.25 per cent (that is, less than one four-hundredth) of the world economy, Ireland has attracted a disproportionately large share of world attention over the pa...
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The Henry Review is an ambitious document, conceived early in the life of a new government at a time when budget surpluses stretched as far as the eye could see, surpluses which could be used to ease the tensions between winners and losers that are the inevitable consequence o...
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(Originally published in the business pages of the Melbourne Age and Sydney Morning Herald on 21 April 2010) One of the sillier propositions which has been propagated on the internet and in a range of investment newsletters over the past couple of years is the idea that the ‘q...
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(Originally published in the business pages of the Melbourne Age and Sydney Morning Herald, 24th March 2010) When I first began writing about the global economy, more than twenty-five years ago, what would be considered a reasonably comprehensive coverage for an Australian aud...
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I should emphasize at the outset that my participation in this Inquiry is strictly in a personal capacity and that the views I express here should not be interpreted as being those of my employer or any of its executives. In the last few months it has become increasingly appar...
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The US National Bureau of Economic Research an academic body which is regarded as the arbiter of American business cycles defines a recession as a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP,...
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One day last week I came into the office to find an email from my boss time-stamped 2:46am (and no, he wasnt in another time-zone) asking what, technically, is a depression. What follows is a slightly expanded version of my answer. There is a very old joke which says a recessi...
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From today's Fin: As had been the case a month earlier, the papers sent out to members of the Reserve Bank Board the Friday before their most recent meeting on Melbourne Cup Day contained a recommendation that the cash rate be lowered by 50 basis points. However, whereas RBA G...
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(Written in response to a question from an ANZ customer, who sent me a copy of an open letter to Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director of the IMF, from Martin Weiss, Chairman of the Sound Dollar Committee, urging him to resist government interventions in the financial syst...
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From The Melbourne Age on 1st October 2008 Monday nights rejection by the US House of Representatives of the US Treasury Secretary Paulsons Troubled Assets Recovery Plan, which had been modified to accommodate the concerns of Congressional leaders, has propelled the financial...
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Below the fold is the text of a talk I gave to the NSW Branch of the Fabian Society in Sydney last Wednesday evening, on 'Economic Challenges Facing the New Labor Government'. Also speaking to the same topic were John Edwards, Chief Economist of HSBC Australia (and a former ec...
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THERES no doubt that housing affordability has deteriorated substantially over the past decade or so. Indeed as conventionally measured in terms of the income required to service the mortgage needed to purchase a median-priced house in any of Australias major cities purchasing...
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Previously published - in edited form - in the SMH yesterday - 10th January. Parents, teachers and coaches often tell their charges that 'you only get out of something in proportion to what you put into it', or words to that effect. Economists are interested in this idea too....
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It wouldn't be at all surprising if politicians and other commentators who have never seen an increase in interest rates that they thought was warranted seized on yesterday's June quarter national accounts as grounds for criticizing the Reserve Bank's decisions to lift interes...
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