The author has been described by News Ltd as an "iconoclast", "Svengali", a pollie's "economist muse", and "pungently accurate". Fairfax says he is a "Renaissance man" and "one of Australia’s most respected analysts." Stephen Koukoulas concludes that he is "85% right", and "would make a great Opposition leader." Terry McCrann claims the author thinks "‘nuance’ is a trendy village in the south of France", but can be "scintillating" when he thinks "clearly". The ACTU reckons he’s "an enigma wrapped in a Bloomberg terminal, wrapped in some apparently well-honed abs."

Sunday, July 29, 2012

Think Gina Rinehart's bad news, spare a thought for UK's Independent, which is owned by an ex KGB oligarch

Here he is quoted in the FT:

I ask him why he likes newspapers so much. “Well, I think it’s culturally so important. This country was just destroying culture for 90 years, destroying [Boris] Pasternak, [Osip] Mandelstam and [Anna] Akhmatova and that brought a huge tragedy to the people, who are recovering from it, but it takes generations. Newspapers are a centre of public culture,” he says. “We can’t give in to extortion. Otherwise we’ll just have a repeat of the last (Soviet) era.”

at 12:05 PM