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."

Saturday, August 25, 2012

Accentuating economic negatives--Weekend AFR column (outside paywall)

I got a little lucky with my AFR column this weekend. You see, I have to file it by Thursday, which means you can get a bit behind the latest events. So I did not have the benefit of knowing what the RBA would say in Parliamentary Testimony on Friday. As it happened, the Governor was very keen to reiterate the insights I drill into in this weekend's column. It was a bit of a fluke, although I probably 'think' in a not wildly different way to the RBA, if you can generalise across the institution. You can read my column outside of the AFR's pleasure-wall here. And I've enclosed a teaser below:

The “fog of war” is used to describe decision-making under duress. Investors grapple with a similar challenge when trying to sort fact from fiction in today’s real-time news cycle. In Australia, the labour and housing markets have held a magnetic appeal for spurious “storytellers”. And it is not only hyperbolic doomsayers like Steve Keen that you have to worry about. There is a negative bias across general news coverage. Don’t take my word for it. This is also the judgment of Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens and one of his chief lieutenants, Guy Debelle.