Monday, October 3, 2016

If the economy’s acting dumb, don’t blame the econocrats

Has it occurred to you that, with the Reserve Bank now run by Dr Philip Lowe and his deputy Dr Guy Debelle, Glenn Stevens may have been the last governor we'll see without a PhD? All Stevens and his predecessor, Ian Macfarlane, could manage was a master's degree. Of course, nothing is certain. After Dr Ken Henry was succeeded as Treasury secretary by Dr Martin Parkinson, I convinced myself the era of PhD-only secretaries had...
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Saturday, October 1, 2016

Breaking news: classical Athens had an economy

Did you know that classical Athens didn't have an economy? If you find that hard to believe, you should - because it's not possible. But if you read the many hundreds of books written about Athens in the classical period, you could be forgiven for imagining that all those philosophers, poets, artists, politicians and generals existed in a world where the mundanities of making a living and raising a family didn't exist. This...
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