You may find this hard to believe, but the 2016 federal election campaign was a full fortnight longer than this one. I remember journalists from the campaign bus complaining afterwards that Malcolm Turnbull was moribund and lazy, booking a single daily event.
One of the stranger things about the Reserve Bank’s announcement of why it’s lifting interest rates by 0.25 percentage points is that it suggests inflation will come down by itself.
“A further rise in inflation is expected in the near term,” the RBA says, “but as supply-side disruptions are resolved, inflation is expected to decline back towards the target range of 2-3%.
There are four economic wildcards between now and the election, and we know exactly when each will be played.
This election will be won by the Coalition and Prime Minister Scott Morrison if the economic models perform as expected – and they usually do.
Yes hello long time blogger, first time in almost two years post. In late 2020 my life (and writing) became consumed by completing a doctorate, which was eventually conferred in September 2021. I even popped on a floppy hat in December last year.
Offered a menu of issues to choose from as the most important in the May 21 election, Australia’s top economists have overwhelmingly zeroed in on one.
One of the strangest, certainly one of the hardest to justify, measures in last week’s budget was called “supporting retirees”.
A better title would have been “supercharging the wealth of those retirees who already have more than enough to live on”.
Wes Mountain/The Conversation, CC BY-ND
Labor’s Senate leadership under attack from within as three leading Senator’s are smeared in the ugliest factional fight to date from a repeat offending sub-faction of the Victorian Right. So what’s it all about and who’s involved?
Another Labor factional shitfight. What’s new eh?
Overwhelmingly, Australia’s top economists would rather the budget funds measures to cut carbon emissions than cuts income tax or company tax.
They are also dead against rumoured cuts to petrol tax and the tax on beer.
The biggest question relating to the management of the economy right now has nothing to do with next week’s budget. It has everything to do with the Reserve Bank and the board meetings that will follow it.
Cutting petrol tax to bring down the cost of living used to be the political version of a joke. Failed US presidential candidates John McCain and Hillary Clinton both tried it in 2008.
The West is arraying financial weapons never deployed before against a country of Russia’s size, forsaking some of the principles that have defined it.
Part of what has defined the West – and most of what has been the world’s engine of prosperity for the past century and a half – has been the free flow of goods across borders, a working banking system, and property rights.
Rainy Sydney in 2011, much the same now
In Sydney right now anyway. How about where you are, everybody?
I hope all hoydens and hoyden-adjacent folks are safe and sound during the latest manifestations of the climate emergency.
