The economic news from Europe in recent days hasn’t been good. And it could get worse as the year progresses. Those guys have big problems. But let’s not spook ourselves by imagining it to be any worse than it is.
Unfortunately, there’s been a tendency in parts of the media to convey an exaggerated impression of how bad things are and of the extent to which Europe’s problems translate into problems for us.
Take last week’s...
Monday, January 30, 2012
Saturday, January 28, 2012
All hail mighty Aussie dollar, as it's here to stay
This year we'll see more painful evidence of Australian businesses accepting the new reality: our dollar is likely to stay uncomfortably high for years, even decades.
It has suited a lot of people to believe that just as the resources boom would be a relatively brief affair, so the high dollar it has brought about wouldn't last.
If there were no more to the resources boom than the skyrocketing of world prices for coal and iron...
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Economic fixes must offer a fair go for all
When you listen to street interviews with people in the troubled countries of the euro zone, a common complaint emerges: whereas some people waxed fat in the boom that preceded the crisis, it's ordinary workers who suffer most in the bust, and they and even poorer people who bear the brunt of government austerity campaigns intended to fix the problem.
In other words, achieving a well-functioning economy is one thing; achieving...
Sunday, January 1, 2012
WHAT MAKES A GOOD LIFE?
January, 2012
Mainstream economics is about enabling people to lead a prosperous life; it’s about telling the community how to be more efficient in its use of scarce resources, with the objective of raising our material standard of living. But is a prosperous life a good life? Not necessarily. So what’s the relationship between prosperity and a good life? Or, to put the question in its classic form, does money buy happiness?...
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