Present gloom is more political than economic

The release of two downbeat indicators of business and consumer confidence last week serves only to deepen the puzzle over the gap between how we feel and what the objective indicators are saying about the state of the economy.

My theory is we have two-track minds. Many of us are thinking gloomier than we’re acting.

As you recall, the national accounts from the Bureau of Statistics show real gross domestic product growing by a remarkable 1.3 per cent in the March quarter and a rip-roaring 4.3 per cent over the year to March.

The bureau’s latest labour force figures, for May, show employment growing by an average of 25,000 a month over the first five months of this year, with much of the growth in the ‘non-mining’ states.

I never take the initial reading of frequently revised estimates too literally. The governor of the Reserve Bank, Glenn Stevens, has noted the annual growth figure is probably inflated by a catch-up effect following the disruption to economic activity caused by the Queensland floods early last year. He’s willing to say only that the economy’s travelling at about ‘trend’ (3.25 per cent a year).

Now Dr Chris Caton, of BT Financial Group, has advanced his own theory to explain the surprisingly strong 1.3 per cent growth in the March quarter. He notes the inclusion of a leap day in the quarter - so it contained 91 days rather than the usual 90 - may have thrown out the bureau’s seasonal adjustment process.

Some components of GDP would have been adjusted for this ‘trading-day effect’, but many may not have. Sounds far fetched? Caton looked back over the five previous leap years, finding the March quarter growth figure exceeded the average rate of growth for the three preceding and three subsequent quarters in four of those years, with the excess for the five years averaging 0.46 percentage points.

But even if you accept Stevens’s judgement the economy’s growing at about trend - which I do - you’re still left saying it’s doing a lot better than implied by the gloominess of business and consumer confidence as we conventionally measure them.

NAB’s business survey for May showed business conditions (the net balance of respondents regarding last month’s trading, profitability and employment performance as good) fell to their weakest level in three years.

To put this in context, the conditions index is now 5 points below its long-term average since 1989, but nothing like as bad as it got during the global financial crisis of 2008-09, let alone the recession of the early 1990s.

The index of business confidence (how the net balance of respondents expects conditions to change in the next month) is saying something roughly similar. NAB says the survey implies GDP growth will slow to an annualised 2 per cent in the June quarter.

The Westpac-Melbourne Institute index of consumer sentiment rose a fraction in June to 96, down almost 6 per cent on a year earlier. It’s pretty low, though at nothing like the depths to which it sank in 2008-09.

The overall index can be divided into two bits, the current conditions index and the expectations index. In June the conditions index rose by 6 per cent, whereas the expectations index fell by 4 per cent. And whereas the conditions index stands at 104, the expectations index is a 90.

I’m a great believer that the mood of consumers and business people does a lot more to drive the business cycle than it suits most economists to admit (because their theory tells them little about what drives confidence and, in any case, it’s not easy to be sure what you’re measuring).

So it pains me to admit that, at present - and not for the first time - the conventional confidence indicators seem to have been bad predictors of what HAS happened in the economy, and don’t look like reliable predictors of what WILL happen.

I think there’s a gap between how people are feeling and how they’re acting. How consumers and business people feel is a function of their direct experience and what their peers are saying and doing, but also of what the media is telling them about the wider world.

They probably give a lot more weight to the former than the latter. Direct experience tells them things aren’t too bad; interest rates have dropped a long way in the past six months and, despite all the media stories, they’ve seen little in the way of job losses close to them.

On the other hand, the media are bringing them a lot of worrying news about Europe and elsewhere. It seems pretty clear this is having a big effect on how they feel. It’s less clear how much it has affected their behaviour - so far, at least.

I suspect the present mood - as opposed to present behaviour - is also affected by political sentiment. A lot of people have decided - rightly or wrongly - the economy is being badly managed.

The NAB business survey showed 47 per cent of respondents believed the May budget would have a negative effect on their business. This seems a huge overreaction to the one piece of bad news for business in the budget: the cost of a cut in the company tax rate of a mere 1 percentage point was instead being paid into the pockets of business’s customers.

And consider this: when you divide the consumer sentiment index according to federal voting intention you find the index for Labor voters stands at 119, whereas the index for (the far greater number of) Coalition voters is down to 82.

Perhaps the main thing the confidence indicators are telling us is something we already know: the Gillard government is highly unpopular with consumers and business people.

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How GST has sprung a leak

It's not a good time to be the taxman. The poor chap has fallen on hard times. But if you think that sounds like good news, you haven't thought it through. We don't pay taxes for fun and the government doesn't tear up our money when it receives it. Obviously, it's used to pay for all the services governments provide.

It's now clear how much trouble the Europeans have brought on themselves by ignoring the two sides of their budgets. It's equally clear a big part of the reason we don't share the Europeans' predicament is the acceptance by our governments - federal and state, Labor and Coalition - over many years that their spending and their tax collections must be kept in balance over time.

So if tax collections are falling short of spending, it follows that either spending must be cut or taxes increased. At present, governments are willing to contemplate only spending cuts, and are working on the theory there's enough inefficiency in the public sector to reduce costs without significantly reducing the services it delivers.

But you can push that relatively politically painless idea only so far. And the problems with tax collections are so deep-seated eventually they - and we - will have to face the terrifying prospect of higher taxes.

The federal government has structural problems with income tax, capital gains tax and company tax, but the tax with the biggest problems is the goods and services tax, as was well explained this week in the NSW government's budget papers, which I'll draw on.

When John Howard introduced the GST in July 2000, he neutralised opposition from the premiers by promising them all the proceeds from the tax in place of the feds' former general revenue grants. So GST is a federally controlled and collected tax that benefits only the states.

It's divided between them according to the principle of "horizontal fiscal equalisation", which aims to ensure each state and territory has the fiscal capacity to provide the national average standard of services and infrastructure.

This means the GST proceeds are divided in a way that ensures those states with greater capacity to raise revenue subsidise those with lesser revenue-raising capacity.

For decades this meant taxpayers in Victoria and NSW subsidised taxpayers in all other states. Since 2008-09, however, the resources boom has left the governments of Queensland and, particularly, Western Australia so flush with mining royalties they too have become subsidisers of the remaining states and territories. So, of late, NSW and Victoria haven't had to subsidise the others nearly as much.

When Howard first handed the proceeds of GST to the states, it seemed clear he'd given them the fabulous "growth tax" they'd long dreamt of. Up to 2007-08, collections grew at an average rate of more than 8 per cent a year - faster than the economy (nominal gross domestic product) was growing.

But every time the federal Treasury peers into the future it revises down its projections for growth in GST receipts. It's now expecting growth over the period from 2008-09 to 2015-16 to be just 4.5 per cent a year.

So what's the problem? Well, there are a couple. The first is that, during the 30 years in which Australian households were progressively lowering their rate of saving, their consumer spending on goods and services was (as a matter of simple arithmetic - the formula is: consumption plus saving equals income) growing faster than household disposable income.

But from about mid-2003 households began increasing their rate of saving, and after the global financial crisis in late 2008 they really got down to it. Obviously, while the rate of saving is increasing consumer spending will be growing more slowly than income.

So it's clear the GST captured only the final few years of the outsized growth in consumer spending. In its first year, 2000-01, consumer spending accounted for 59 per cent of nominal GDP. By 2007-08 it had fallen to 56 per cent and by 2010-11, 54 per cent.

But for the past 18 months the net household saving rate has been roughly steady at about 9.5 per cent of household disposable income, meaning consumer spending has been growing at much the same rate as household income. If the household saving rate has stabilised, consumer spending will continue falling as a proportion of GDP only if household disposable income grows at a slower rate than GDP, which doesn't seem likely.

But that's just the first reason the joy has come out of GST as a great little revenue raiser (of an expected $48 billion in the coming financial year, or 3.2 per cent of GDP).

Although we tend to think of GST as a tax on the purchase of all goods and services, in fact a significant slice of the value of our purchases (initially, about 36 per cent) is exempt from the tax. Our spending on rent, health and education were excluded because taxing them accurately was judged too hard. Then spending on food was excluded as part of the deal needed to get the tax passed by the Senate.

Fine. What's happened since then is, although the volume (quantity) of our purchases of these exempt items has grown pretty much in line with the volume of taxable items, the prices of the exempt items have consistently grown faster than prices of the taxable items.

So much so that over the tax's first 11 years, the value (price times volume) of taxable consumption relative to total private consumption has fallen about 4 percentage points.

Since health and education are "superior goods" (we spend an increasing proportion of our income on them as our incomes rise), and costs in both areas grow significantly faster than other consumer prices, we can expect this erosion of the GST tax base to keep rolling on.

At first blush, the feds can dismiss this as the premiers' problem. But the states are so dependent on GST revenue (in NSW's case, to the tune of a quarter of total revenue) and are so restricted by the constitution in what they may tax that, in the end, it's a problem for Canberra.

And since we know from successive intergenerational reports that most of the pressure on federal and state budgets over the next 40 years will come from health spending, the lasting solution is staring us in the face: the GST's tax base must be broadened at least to include private spending on education and health.

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Much change is structural, not cyclical

One of the first lessons economists teach us is that the economy moves in cycles of boom and bust. A second, trickier lesson is that although most of the changes going on in the economy at any moment are "cyclical" (temporary), there may also be changes driven by "structural" (longer-lasting) forces.

In a speech last week, Glenn Stevens, the governor of the Reserve Bank, implied that much of the "unrelentingly gloomy" public discussion about the economy may be caused by people mistaking structural problems for cyclical ones.

Despite the official statistics saying the economy's quite healthy, people think it's weak and want the economy's managers to get it moving by such standard remedies as a tax cut or a cut in interest rates.

But if the problem is structural - if it arises from deep-seated changes in the economic environment - such remedies will make little difference. Structural change is rarely painless - it often involves people losing their jobs and businesses failing - but it's almost always better to adapt to the way the world now works than try to resist it.

The boom in export prices and the construction of new mines arises from the historic re-emergence of the Chinese and Indian economies and is a classic example of structural change. The accompanying high dollar is helping to bring about a long-term shift of workers and capital into mining and away from manufacturing, tourism and overseas education.

But Stevens argues the resources boom is getting blamed for the problems of industries whose tough times are the product of a quite different source of structural adjustment: the markedly changed behaviour of Australian households. Consider his figuring.

In the mid-1970s, households began reducing the proportion of their disposable incomes they saved, meaning their spending was able to grow faster than their incomes. But this went into overdrive between 1995 and 2005.

Over that decade, households cut their rate of saving by a cumulative 5 percentage points. In consequence, their consumer spending grew at an average annual rate of 2.8 per cent per person, after allowing for inflation, even though their disposable incomes grew at a real annual rate of just 2.3 per cent per person.

Why did so many of us feel we no longer needed to save much of our income for use later on? Largely, it seems, because we saw ourselves getting wealthier as each year passed. The gross value of assets held by households - mainly the value of our homes - more than doubled between 1995 and 2007. That involved a real annual increase of more than 6 per cent per person.

Only a small part of this increase came from the building of additional homes. Most of it was just the rise in the prices of existing homes.

So why did housing prices rise so dramatically? Mainly because we went through a decade-long frenzy of competing with each other to move to better homes, which bid up prices.

In the process, of course, households took on a lot more debt, including for investment properties. Total household debt rose from 70 per cent of total annual household income in 1995 to about 150 per cent in 2007. This unprecedented "gearing up" by households was made possible by the deregulation of the banks and the return to low inflation and, hence, low mortgage interest rates.

All this borrowing couldn't have gone on forever, and households began to call a halt a year or two before the global financial crisis reached its peak in late 2008, after which they really began saving a lot more and trying to get on top of their debts.

While households were increasing their rate of saving, their consumer spending grew more slowly than their incomes. But their saving rate has been relatively stable - at a rate last seen in the 1980s - for about 18 months, meaning consumer spending has returned to growing at the same rate as incomes.

As part of our households' return to their former prudence, the rate at which homes change hands has fallen by a third from its average over the previous decade. And now the demand for housing has slackened, house prices have fallen back a bit. They won't keep falling forever, but nor are we ever likely to see them shooting up the way they used to.

The return of the prudent consumer is causing adjustment pains for various industries: the banks aren't doing as much business (I know your heart bleeds), nor are the real estate agents. State governments are getting a lot less revenue from conveyancing duty.

Last but not least are the retailers. The halcyon days of rapid growth in consumer spending are gone for good and they'll just have to get used to it. Those retailers selling the sorts of things people buy when they move into a new home are finding life a lot tougher.

But the end of the "platinum age" is just one source of structural change facing retailers. Another source is that retailers sell goods, but as each year passes, more of the consumer dollar goes on services and less on goods.

Yet another is the digital revolution. While shopping in one store, people are using their smartphones to check the prices being offered in rival stores, then demand they be matched. And the internet is giving people access to the cheaper prices charged by retailers in other countries.

None of these various structural changes are the fault of the government and there's little the managers of the economy can or should do to halt or even alleviate them. Business has little sensible choice but to adjust. In any case, most are for the better.

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THE ECONOMY AND THE POLICY MIX

June 2012

If you’re not quite sure what’s happening in the economy at present, don’t feel bad. Some people are saying the economy’s in bad shape; others are saying it’s doing pretty well. The reason for the confusion is that the economy’s being hit by three different factors, at present: one expansionary, one contractionary and one that sounds worse than it actually is - so far, at least. These conflicting factors are affecting different industries differently and different states differently. This is because they’re bringing about a change in the structure of our economy, and structural change is often painful. The three factors are: first, the resources boom; second, the high exchange rate the resources boom has brought about and, third, the problems in the developed economies of the North Atlantic, particularly the Europeans’ debt crisis and worries about the survival of the euro. Let’s start with the troubles in the North Atlantic, then move to the boom then on to the high exchange rate.

Problems in America and Europe

The mighty US economy is recovering only very slowly from the Great Recession of 2008-09. But the problems are much more severe in continental Europe, as well as Britain. Europe’s basic problem of excessive levels of public debt is greatly complicated by the now-exposed structural weaknesses in the euro currency union. Most governments have resorted to the policy of ‘austerity’ - attempting to reduce budget deficits by slashing government spending and raising taxes at a time when their economic recoveries were still very weak. Unsurprisingly, this policy has proved counter-productive and has pushed various economies back into recession.

The media have given great publicity to Europe’s troubles and its tribulations have caused weakness in global sharemarkets, including ours. But the real question is the extent to which Europe’s problems affect our economy. They could do so via three main channels. First, the financial channel: they could cause certain global lending markets to seize up for a time, or increase the risk premiums paid by Australian banks or businesses borrowing in those markets. Second, the confidence channel: media reports of problems in Europe could damage the confidence of Australian consumers and business people. Third, the trade channel: weak growth or contraction in Europe could reduce our exports.

So what damage have we suffered so far? Europe’s tribulations have added a little to our banks’ costs of borrowing overseas. They do seem to have added to the uncertainty of our business people, helping to explain the weakness of non-mining business investment spending. But it’s hard to be sure Europe has had much effect on consumers because the household saving rate has been steady for more than a year and consumer spending has been growing at its trend rate. Europe accounts for less than 10 pc of our exports, so its weakness has had little direct effect on our export income.

However, Europe is a significant customer of our biggest export customer, China. So any adverse effect from Europe’s weakness could come to us via China - unless China were to offset the fall in its export income from Europe by stimulating its domestic demand, as it seems willing and able to do.

Bottom line: Europe’s problems have had some negative effect on us, but so far, not much. This could change, however, if the euro arrangement collapsed. Were something really bad to happen in Europe, the RBA would react quickly with big cuts in the official interest rate.

Resources boom

The big expansionary shock to the economy is coming from the resources boom, the biggest we have experienced since the gold rush. The rapid industrialisation of China and India has pushed prices for our exports of coal and iron ore to extraordinary heights, with our terms of trade only now starting to fall from their best level in 200 years. The improvement in the terms of trade represents a significant increase in the nation’s real income which, when spent, adds to demand. The boom has also added to demand by sparking a huge surge of investment spending on the construction of new mines and liquid-gas facilities. The emerging economies’ demand for the main components of steel is likely to stay strong for a decade or two. So, though the price of our exports of coal and iron ore is likely to fall back to less extreme levels, the volume of our exports is likely to continue growing for many years.

High exchange rate

The big contractionary shock to the economy is coming from the still very high exchange rate caused by the resources boom. An improvement in our terms of trade almost always leads to a rise in our exchange rate. Our dollar is likely to stay unusually high for some years, even as commodity prices fall back, because of the significant net inflow of foreign capital needed to finance the expansion of our mining sector. The high exchange rate helps to prevent the resources boom from leading to inflation by, first, directly reducing the price of imports and, second, reducing the international price competitiveness of our export and import-competing industries, thus reducing their production and so working in the direction of diminishing demand.

Structural change

The public is used to thinking about the economy in cyclical terms: it’s either booming or turning down. At present, however, because these two big shocks to the economy - the resources boom and the high dollar - are working on opposite directions, the economy is neither booming nor busting. It’s easier to understand what’s going on in the economy if you think of it in structural terms: the interplay of the two conflicting forces bearing on the economy is causing some industries to expand while others contract. The mining industry and mining-related parts of the construction industry and the manufacturing industry - accounting in total for up to 20 per cent of GDP - is expanding rapidly, whereas most of the other trade-exposed industries (manufacturing and service export industries such as tourism and education) are likely to get relatively smaller. The other industry that’s suffering from structural change is retailing. The pressures it’s facing have little to do with the high dollar, however. It’s being affected by the digital revolution and the rise of e-commerce.

Outlook for the economy

Over the year to March, the economy grew by an exceptional 4.3 pc, lead by strong consumer spending and the boom in mining investment. But now the economic managers are expecting growth to return to its trend rate of 3.25 pc for the coming financial year, 2012-13, as a whole. But this is expected to involve quite disparate growth in the components of GDP: another very big increase in mining investment spending and trend growth in consumer spending, but no growth in new home building and a small contraction in public sector spending as federal and state governments seek to return to operating surplus.

And note that the other economic indicators are looking pretty good at present. The latest figures say underlying inflation is running at 2.2 pc - almost down to the bottom of the RBA’s 2 to 3 pc inflation target. The latest figures say unemployment is running at about 5 pc - which economists say is down very close to our NAIRU - the non-accelerating-inflation rate of unemployment, which is the lowest point to which unemployment can fall before labour shortages start causing wage and price inflation. That is, unemployment is very close to its lowest sustainable rate.

Monetary policy

Monetary policy - the manipulation of interest rates to influence the strength of demand - is conducted by the RBA independent of the elected government. It is the primary instrument by which the managers of the economy pursue internal balance - low inflation and low unemployment. MP is conducted in accordance with the inflation target: to hold the inflation rate between 2 and 3 pc, on average, over the cycle. The primary instrument of MP is the overnight cash rate, which the RBA controls via market operations.

Aware the unemployment rate was only a little above the NAIRU and concerned the resources boom could lead to excessive wage growth, the RBA stood ready to tighten monetary policy throughout most of 2011. But, partly because of the lingering effect of the Queensland floods in early 2011, the economy did not accelerate as the RBA had forecast. Instead, the outlook for growth in the North Atlantic economies worsened, business and consumer confidence weakened and inflation continued to improve. So the RBA cut the cash rate by a click in both November and December of 2011, lowering it to 4.25 pc. In May it cut by 0.5 points in June by a further 0.25 points, taking the cash rate down to 3.5 pc, more than offsetting the banks’ efforts to preserve their profit margins, and producing a net fall in the interest rates actually paid by households and businesses. With market interest rates a little below their long-run average, the stance of monetary policy is now mildly expansionary.

Fiscal policy

Fiscal policy - the manipulation of government spending and taxation in the budget - is conducted according to the Gillard government’s medium-term fiscal strategy: ‘to achieve budget surpluses, on average, over the medium term’. This means the primary role of discretionary fiscal policy is to achieve ‘fiscal sustainability’ - that is, to ensure we don’t build up an unsustainable level of public debt. However, the strategy leaves room for the budget’s automatic stabilisers to be unrestrained in assisting monetary policy in pursuing internal balance. It also leaves room for discretionary fiscal policy to be used to stimulate the economy and thus help monetary policy manage demand, in exceptional circumstances - such as the GFC - provided the stimulus measures are temporary.

After the onset of the GFC, tax collections fell heavily, and they have yet to fully recover. The Rudd government applied considerable fiscal stimulus to the economy by a large but temporary increase in government spending.

The government’s ‘deficit exit strategy’ requires it to avoid further tax cuts and limit the real growth in government spending to 2 pc a year until the budget has returned to a surplus equivalent to 1 pc of GDP. The delay in returning to surplus is caused not by continuing high spending but by continuing weak revenue.

In this year’s budget the government shifted its spending plans around to allow it to keep its election promise to budget for (then actually achieve) a tiny budget surplus in 2012-13. After allowing for unimportant changes in the timing of spending and the effect on demand of particular budget measures, the stance of fiscal policy is much less contractionary than it appears to be, with the Treasury secretary estimating the effect to be less than 1 pc of GDP, which is still significant.

Conclusion

Should the contractionary stance of fiscal policy combine with other factors to weaken aggregate demand, the RBA has scope to counter this by further loosening monetary policy from its present stance of ‘mildly expansionary’.

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HOW EFFECTIVE IS MONETARY POLICY IN THE PRESENT ECONOMIC CLIMATE?

June 2012

One of the big events this year is the Gillard government’s plan to return the budget to surplus in the coming financial year, 2012-13. As the budget papers make clear, this represents the end of the unusual period in which discretionary fiscal policy was used to assist monetary policy in countering the effects of the global financial crisis. Now, although the budget’s automatic stabilisers will continue to be allowed to play their role in assisting to achieve internal balance - a steady rate of economic growth and thus low inflation and low unemployment - discretionary fiscal policy will revert to its primary objective of achieving ‘fiscal sustainability’ - that is, avoiding the build up over time of large levels of net public debt.

So monetary policy is back to being the primary instrument used to achieve internal balance. But that raises a question in a lot of people’s minds: with the banks making their own ‘unofficial’ or ‘out-of-cycle’ increases in mortgage interest rates, or passing on to borrowers less than the Reserve Bank’s full cuts in the cash rate, how effective is monetary policy these days? Is it as powerful as it was as an instrument for influencing the strength of demand and achieving low inflation and low unemployment? We’ll discuss this question first, then we’ll look at what’s happening in the economy and how fiscal and monetary policies are being used to respond to those developments.

Is monetary policy still effective?

The main instrument the RBA uses to achieve its objective is what the media call the ‘official’ interest rate and economists call the ‘cash rate’. This is the cost of borrowing overnight in the money market; the rate at which the banks lend to each other. The RBA keeps the cash rate under very tight control by means of open market operations. Between 1999 and 2007 it was easy to see how the RBA’s ability to change the cash rate led to changes in the rates the banks charged on home mortgages and borrowing by businesses: any change in the cash rate - whether up or down - was soon passed on by the banks to their customers.

But from 2007, in the early days of the global financial crisis, that simple relationship broke down and the banks began making ‘unofficial’ rate changes, usually in association with official changes. Why did things change? Because of the money-market disruption and changed relationships brought about by the GFC.

The cash rate is regarded as the risk-free rate of borrowing overnight and it thus forms the ‘anchor’ for all other short-term and variable interest rates in the market. The other rates will usually be higher than the cash rate, with those other rates’ margin (or ‘spread’) above the cash rate reflecting the extra reward to lenders for the various risks they have taken on: the ‘credit risk’ (of not being repaid), the ‘liquidity risk’ (of being unable to sell the debt security without loss because of limited demand for that security) and the ‘term risk’ (of having your money tied up for a longer period).

During the period up to the start of the GFC, all these risks, and hence margins, stayed steady. So a change in the risk-free anchor could be passed on mechanically to the banks’ borrowers. But the GFC made people in various international markets a lot more conscious of the risks they were running, thus increasing the spreads they were demanding. Some markets actually ceased to operate for a time. This wiped out our banks’ chief competitors, the mortgage originators, which ended up being bought out by the banks. Later on, the prudential supervisors and the rating agencies decided our banks had made themselves too vulnerable to events such as the GFC by relying too heavily on short-term borrowing from overseas money markets. So the banks began trying to lengthen the maturity of their foreign borrowing and also began competing with each other to attract more domestic deposits, particularly term deposits.

These changed conditions meant that, though the cash rate - the risk-free anchor for interest rates - remained the largest single influence over the banks’ cost of funds, that cost was also influenced by other factors, such as the changing spreads required by foreign long-term lenders to our banks and by the higher rates needed to attract more term deposits from Australian savers. Anxious to preserve their existing (very generous) ‘net interest margin’ (the difference been the banks’ average cost of funds and the average rate they charge their borrowers), the banks have become emboldened to pass any increase in their cost of funds on to their customers independent of changes in the cash rate.

After the RBA’s cut in the cash rate of 25 basis points in June, the banks decided to pass on about 20 or 21 basis points, thus demonstrating that the cash rate remains the dominant influence over market rates (in this example, 84 pc) notwithstanding the change in the banks’ circumstances and behaviour.

The more fundamental reason for remaining confident the effectiveness of monetary policy has not been reduced is the RBA’s repeated statements that the interest rates it cares about are those actually being paid by households and businesses, not the cash rate. So it makes whatever changes to the cash rate are necessary to get mortgage rates and business borrowing rates where it wants them to be.

Many politicians and home-buyers are highly disapproving of the banks’ efforts to preserve their profitability by increasing the spread between the cash rate and the mortgage rate. But don’t confuse the question of whether you approve of the banks’ behaviour with the question of whether monetary policy has become less effective. It hasn’t.

Factors affecting the economy

The economy’s being hit by three different factors, at present: one expansionary, one contractionary and one that sounds worse than it actually is - so far, at least. These conflicting factors are affecting different industries differently and different states differently. This is because they’re bringing about a change in the structure of our economy, and structural change is often painful.

The first factor is the resources boom, which is expansionary because higher export prices have added to the nation’s real income and because the mining investment boom is adding to economic activity.

The second factor is the high exchange rate the resources boom has brought about. This is helping to ensure the boom doesn’t lead to higher inflation by directly reducing the prices of imports but also by reducing the international price competitiveness of our export and import-competing industries, particularly manufacturing, tourism and education. This tends to reduce their output and their profits, thus making it a contractionary force.

The third factor affecting the economy is the problems in the developed economies of the North Atlantic, particularly the Europeans’ debt crisis and worries about the survival of the euro. At this stage, Europe’s problems are probably having a bigger effect on the confidence of consumers and business people than they are on any other aspect of the economy.

Fiscal policy

Fiscal policy - the manipulation of government spending and taxation in the budget - is conducted according to the Gillard government’s medium-term fiscal strategy: ‘to achieve budget surpluses, on average, over the medium term’. This means the primary role of discretionary fiscal policy is to achieve ‘fiscal sustainability’ - that is, to ensure we don’t build up an unsustainable level of public debt. However, the strategy leaves room for the budget’s automatic stabilisers to be unrestrained in assisting monetary policy in pursuing internal balance. It also leaves room for discretionary fiscal policy to be used to stimulate the economy and thus help monetary policy manage demand, in exceptional circumstances - such as the GFC - provided the stimulus measures are temporary.

After the onset of the GFC, tax collections fell heavily, and they have yet to fully recover. The Rudd government applied considerable fiscal stimulus to the economy by a large but temporary increase in government spending.

The government’s ‘deficit exit strategy’ requires it to avoid further tax cuts and limit the real growth in government spending to 2 pc a year until the budget has returned to a surplus equivalent to 1 pc of GDP. The delay in returning to surplus is caused not by continuing high spending but by continuing weak revenue.

In this year’s budget the government shifted its spending plans around to allow it to keep its election promise to budget for (then actually achieve) a tiny budget surplus in 2012-13. After allowing for unimportant changes in the timing of spending and the effect on demand of particular budget measures, the stance of fiscal policy is much less contractionary than it appears to be, with the Treasury secretary estimating the effect to be less than 1 pc of GDP, which is still significant.

Monetary policy

Monetary policy - the manipulation of interest rates to influence the strength of demand - is conducted by the RBA independent of the elected government. It is the primary instrument by which the managers of the economy pursue internal balance - low inflation and low unemployment. MP is conducted in accordance with the inflation target: to hold the inflation rate between 2 and 3 pc, on average, over the cycle. The primary instrument of MP is the overnight cash rate, which the RBA controls via market operations.

Aware the unemployment rate was only a little above the NAIRU (the non-accelerating-inflation rate of unemployment) and concerned the resources boom could lead to excessive wage growth, the RBA stood ready to tighten monetary policy throughout most of 2011. But, partly because of the lingering effect of the Queensland floods in early 2011, the economy did not accelerate as much as the RBA had forecast. The outlook for growth in the North Atlantic economies worsened, business and consumer confidence weakened and inflation continued to improve. So the RBA cut the cash rate by a click in both November and December of 2011, lowering it to 4.25 pc. In May it cut by 0.5 points in June by a further 0.25 points, taking the cash rate down to 3.5 pc, more than offsetting the banks’ efforts to preserve their profit margins, and producing a net fall in the interest rates actually paid by households and businesses. With market interest rates a little below their long-run average, the stance of monetary policy is now mildly expansionary.

Conclusion

Should the contractionary stance of fiscal policy combine with other factors to weaken aggregate demand, the RBA has scope to counter this by further loosening monetary policy from its present stance of ‘mildly expansionary’.

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Why we can't read the economy without help

The nation's economists, commentators and business people got caught with their pants down last week. They'd convinced themselves the economy was weak, but the Bureau of Statistics produced figures showing it was remarkably strong.

It's not the first time they've failed such a reality test. They prefer not to think about such embarrassing, humbling occurrences, but it's important to ask ourselves why we got it so wrong.

The bureau told us real gross domestic product grew by 1.3 per cent in the March quarter and by 4.3 per cent over the year to March. Then it produced labour force figures for May, showing employment has been growing at the rate of 25,000 a month this year, with much of that growth in NSW and Victoria.

So why is there such a yawning gap between what we thought was happening in the economy and what statistics say is happening?

Well, one possibility is the figures are wrong. That's likely to be true - to some extent. They're highly volatile from quarter to quarter and month to month, and much of that volatility is likely to be statistical "noise" rather than "signal".

But the financial markets, economists and media knowingly add to the noise by insisting on using the seasonally adjusted figures rather than the trend (smoothed seasonally adjusted) figures as the bureau urges them to. Truth is, both markets and media have a vested interest in volatility for its own sake - it makes for better bets and better stories.

However, even if the latest figures are likely to be revised down, their "back story" still contradicts the conventional wisdom. Cut March quarter growth back to the 0.6 per cent economists were forecasting and you're still left with above-trend annual growth of 3.6 per cent.

Consumer spending may not have grown by as much as 1.6 per cent in the March quarter, but - and notwithstanding all the retailers' complaints - it's been growing at above-trend rates for a year.

Another argument embarrassed economists are making is that the March quarter figures are "backward looking". All the news since March has been bad. They always use that excuse. But there's nothing out of date about job figures for May, and they, too, tell a story of strengthening growth.

If you accept, as you should, the figures are roughly right - especially viewed over a run of months or quarters - you have to ask how our perceptions of the economy have got so far astray from statistical reality.

It's less surprising business people's perceptions are off the mark. They're not students of economic theory or statistical indicators; their judgments are unashamedly subjective, based on direct experience and the anecdotes they hear from other business people, plus an overlay of what the media tell them.

More surprising is the evidence economists' judgments and forecasts aren't as rigorously objective and indicator-based as they like to imagine. They're affected by the mood of the business people they associate with and aren't immune to the distorted picture of reality spread by the media (because they highlight events that are interesting - and, hence, predominantly bad - rather than representative).

Like the punters, business people probably overestimate the macro-economic significance of falls in the sharemarket - particularly when our sharemarket is taking its lead from overseas markets reacting to economic news in the US and Europe that doesn't have much direct bearing on our economy.

Similarly, all the bad news from America and, particularly, Europe we're hearing from the media night after night can't help infecting our views about our economy. We're getting more economic news from China these days but we hear about the threats rather than the opportunities.

The familiar refrain about the alleged two-speed economy is tailor-made for the media but, as last week's figures make clear, an exaggeration of the truth. Consumer spending is reasonably strong in the non-mining states, as is employment growth this year.

In the absence of anything better, economists and the media persist in setting too much weight on the bureau's quarterly figures for state final demand, unaware they give an exaggerated picture of the differences in gross state product between the mining and non-mining states (because Western Australia and Queensland use much of their income to buy goods and services from NSW and Victoria).

The risk is the more we repeat the two-speed story to ourselves the more it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. This may be part of the explanation for the weakness in non-mining business investment spending, but as yet it doesn't seem to have affected consumer spending.

The media's highlighting of announced job lay-offs is a classic example of the way their inevitably selective reporting of job movements leaves the public, business people and maybe even economists with a falsely negative impression of the state of the labour market.

A recent list of 25 lay-off announcements showed total job losses of 17,000. When people wonder how the bureau's employment figures could be right when we know so many jobs are being lost, they're showing their ignorance of how selective media reporting is and how big the labour market is.

In a workforce of 11.5 million people, job losses of 17,000 are peanuts (though not, of course, to the individuals involved). Far more than 17,000 workers leave their jobs every month and far more take up jobs every month. The media tell us about just some of the job losses and about virtually none of the job gains.

The unvarnished truth - which none of us can admit, even to ourselves - is we think we know what's happening in the economy, but we don't. We're too fallible, and it's too big and complicated.

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Figures to cheer us up

Oh dearie, dearie me. We've been embarrassed in the nicest possible way. The Bureau of Statistics has produced figures showing the economy roaring along in the March quarter, when we'd convinced ourselves things were pretty weak.

It followed that up with figures showing a lot stronger growth in employment in May than economists had been expecting.

Three months ago we were told the economy (real gross domestic product) grew an exceptionally weak 0.4 per cent in the December quarter and 2.3 per cent over the year to December - well below the ''trend'' (long-term average) annual growth rate of 3.25 per cent.

On the strength of this and other indications, economists were expecting growth in the March quarter of just 0.6 per cent and growth over the year to March of about 3.2 per cent.

Instead we've been told this week that growth in the quarter was more than twice that - 1.3 per cent. For good measure, the figure for the December quarter was revised up to 0.6 per cent, and for September it was raised 0.2 points to 1 per cent.

For the June quarter growth was left unchanged at 1.4 per cent, meaning growth for the year to March was a remarkable 4.3 per cent - way above trend.

Question is, can we believe it? Or, to put it more carefully, how literally should we take these figures? Well, I'm no statistical fundamentalist. Unlike many in the media, I don't assume the bureau's estimates (and ''estimates'' is the bureau's word) are God's immutable truth.

Its monthly job figures are subject to sampling error and human error. Its quarterly figures from the national accounts are produced before all the necessary information has come to hand, and so represent a first stab at the truth. As more reliable information comes in, the bureau revises its figures, gradually closing in on an approximation of reality.

I'm not convinced the economy grew as strongly as 1.3 per cent in the March quarter, and I won't be surprised to see that figure revised down in subsequent quarters. So I don't really believe the economy grew by a rip-roaring 4.3 per cent over the past year.

Were that to be true, you'd have expected stronger growth in employment over the period, even though it's been a lot stronger this year than it was in 2011, and the bureau has belatedly confessed that, due to human error, it overstated employment growth in 2010, then sought to quietly correct the problem by understating it in 2011. Not a smart way to protect your credibility, guys.

Even so, it's not possible to point to anything in this week's accounts that looks obviously dubious. And they're now showing a picture of strong growth in all four quarters bar December.

It's true, however, the accounts show a very mixed picture for different parts of the economy. The weakest part is home building. It contracted 2.1 per cent in the quarter and 6.2 per cent over the year to March.

Spending by the public sector is essentially flat in real terms as federal and state governments seek to get their budgets back into operating surplus.

Non-mining business investment spending is weak, while weather problems caused a fall in the volume of exports, and import volumes grew quite strongly. Net exports (exports minus imports) subtracted 0.5 percentage points from growth in GDP during the quarter and 1.3 points over the year.

So where did the growth come from? You won't need me to tell you growth in mining investment spending is exceptionally strong. New engineering construction increased by nearly 20 per cent in the quarter to be up more than 50 per cent over the year.

So far, the story fits the familiar refrain about the alleged two-speed economy. ''No wonder we think the economy's stuffed - in our part of the country, it is. All the growth's in the Pilbara and Queensland's Bowen Basin.''

Sorry, but that won't wash. The other big contributor to growth was consumer spending, growing 1.6 per cent in the quarter and 4.2 per cent over the year. Both figures are way above trend and they mean consumption contributed 0.9 percentage points to GDP growth in the quarter, and 2.4 points over the year.

Yes, you may object, but how do you know the lion's share of the consumer spending didn't come from Western Australia and Queensland? Because I checked. In the March quarter, consumption growth was above trend in all states and territories.

It was strongest in Western Australia with growth of 2.4 per cent, and pretty strong in Queensland at 1.9 per cent. But in sorry-for-itself Victoria it was a rip-roaring 2.1 per cent. The weakest it got was 0.9 per cent in NSW.

Together, Western Australia and Queensland account for a third of the nation's gross domestic product. They accounted for an above-weight 39 per cent of consumer spending in the March quarter. But that left the rest of us accounting for 61 per cent of the spending.

They're going gangbusters but the rest of us are at death's door? I don't think so.

And though it has been true the mining states accounted for most of the growth in employment around the country, it's a lot less true over the first five months of this year.

Using the trend estimates, total employment grew at an annualised rate of 1.5 per cent (not too bad) during the period. Victoria accounted for almost a third of the increase and NSW for more than a quarter.

Returning to consumer spending during the March quarter, when you scrutinise it you find it was strong across all the spending categories. Retail sales accounts for fewer than a third of total consumer spending but even it recorded strong real growth for the quarter of 1.8 per cent (though retailers had to discount heavily to achieve it - which would explain their continuing complaints).

The strong growth in consumer spending has occurred without any significant fall in the rate of household saving, which has been relatively stable at 9.5 per cent for two years. That is, consumer spending has been strong because household disposable income has been growing strongly.

The economy may not be travelling quite as well as the latest national accounts imply, but it has been travelling a lot better than a lot of us have imagined. We'd do well to cheer up.

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How to improve health without paying more to doctors

It's a well established fact and most of us have at least heard of it. It's also a surprising fact. But it's a fact that doesn't get nearly as much attention as it deserves - not from our politicians, the media or the public.

It's known to social scientists and medicos as the "social gradient" or the "social determinants of health". And it means there's a strong correlation between socio-economic status and health. The higher your status, the better your health.

To put it the other way, the lower a person's social and economic position, the worse their health. And the health gaps between the most disadvantaged and least disadvantaged socio-economic groups are often very large.

One organisation that's taken a great interest in the phenomenon is Catholic Health Australia. It has commissioned the national centre for social and economic modelling (NATSEM) at the University of Canberra to produce two reports on the subject, one of them released this week. It has also produced a policy paper of its own. I'll be drawing on all three documents.

You may think the explanation is pretty obvious: the more money you've got, the better health care you can afford. You can also afford a more nutritious diet. And the better educated you are, the more aware you're likely to be of the risks to health from smoking, excessive drinking and insufficient exercise.

These things are part of it, no doubt, but it's not that simple. Medicare is, after all, free or cheap to all. And who doesn't know that smoking damages your health?

There's growing evidence that status and power affect health. The lower you are in the hierarchy, the worse your health is likely to be. A fair bit of it seems to be psychological.

A study of men in England found life expectancy of 78.5 years for a professional worker, 76 years for a skilled non-manual worker and 71 years for an unskilled manual worker.

According to a paper by the American College of Physicians, job classification is a better predictor of cardiovascular death than cholesterol level, blood pressure and smoking combined. And non-completion of high school is a greater risk factor than biological factors for the development of many diseases.

The earlier report from NATSEM found that if people in the most disadvantaged areas of Australia had the same death rate as those in the most advantaged areas, up to two-thirds of premature deaths would be prevented.

Among Australians aged 25 to 44, only 10 per cent of those who are least disadvantaged report having poor health, whereas for those who are most disadvantaged it's up to 30 per cent. Among Australians aged 45 to 64, the most disadvantaged are up to 40 per cent less likely to have good health than the least disadvantaged.

Early high school leavers and those who are least socially connected are 10 per cent to 20 per cent less likely to report being in good health than those with a tertiary education or a high level of social connectedness.

Those Australians who are most socio-economically disadvantaged are twice as likely as those who are least disadvantaged to have a long-term health condition. More than 60 per cent of men in jobless households report having a long-term health condition or disability, and more than 40 per cent of women.

The socio-economic factors best at predicting whether people smoke are education, housing tenure (whether you rent, are paying off your home or own it outright) and income. Less than 15 per cent of individuals with a tertiary education smoke.

Among women aged 25 to 44, less than 20 per cent of those in the most advantaged socio-economic classes are obese, compared with up to 30 per cent of those in the most disadvantaged classes. The likelihood of being a high risk drinker for younger adults who left school early is up to two times higher than for those with a tertiary qualification.

See what this is saying? There are two ways to improve the nation's health. One way is to spend a lot more taxpayers' money on health care. That's the solution we're always hearing about, especially from doctors.

The other way is to reduce socio-economic disadvantage; to narrow the gap between the top and the bottom, not just in income but also in educational attainment (completing secondary education), housing tenure (more affordable rental accommodation) and the way people are treated at work.

This is the solution we rarely hear about. It too would cost money, of course. But it would make more people happy as well as healthy. And it would also save taxpayers money. Just how much is what NATSEM attempts to estimate in this week's report.

If the health gaps between the most and least disadvantaged groups were closed (an impossible ideal, but one we could work towards), up to 500,000 Australians could avoid suffering a chronic illness. Up to 170,000 people could enter the labour force, generating up to $8 billion a year in extra earnings.

That would produce savings in welfare payments of up to $4 billion a year. Up to 60,000 fewer people would need to be admitted to hospital annually, producing savings of $2.3 billion. Up to 5.5 million fewer Medicare services would be needed each year, saving up to $275 million. And up to 5.3 million fewer prescriptions would be needed each year, saving the pharmaceutical benefits scheme up to $185 million a year.

But the real point is that when we choose to allow the gap between rich and poor to widen each year - including by allowing the dole to stay below the poverty line - we're casting a blind eye to the ill health it causes.

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MANAGING A THREE-SPEED ECONOMY

Talk to UBS Economics Lecture Day, Sydney, Tuesday, June 5, 2012

When you’re a manager of the Australian economy - when you’re the governor of the Reserve Bank in charge of monetary policy, or the federal Treasurer, in charge of fiscal policy - there’s always some problem you’re having to cope with. When the economy’s in recession, or growing only weakly, you probably don’t have a problem with inflation, but you are very worried about high unemployment and how you can get it down. When the economy’s growing strongly, you probably don’t have a problem with high unemployment, but you are worried about a build up in inflation pressure and what you have to do to keep inflation under control.

Economic report card

So what’s the big problem for the economic managers at present? Well, as you’ve been hearing, if you look overseas at the world economy, you find plenty. But I’m going to focus on our economy, and if you’d just arrived here from Mars and took a quick look, you might think it all looks pretty good. In last month’s budget, Wayne Swan forecast growth in real GDP in the coming financial year, 2012-13, of 3.25 per cent - which is right on the economy’s ‘trend’ rate of growth (its longer-term average rate, which is also its ideal cruising speed, so to speak). The latest figures say underlying inflation is running at 2.2 pc - almost down to the bottom of the RBA’s 2 to 3 pc inflation target. The latest figures say unemployment is running at about 5 pc - which economists say is down very close to our NAIRU - the non-accelerating-inflation rate of unemployment, which is the lowest point to which unemployment can fall before labour shortages start causing wage and price inflation. That is, unemployment is very close to its lowest sustainable rate. Even if you look at the latest figures for the current account deficit, you find it’s down at 2.3 pc of GDP, compared with its trend rate of about 4.5 pc.

The resources boom and its high dollar

So our Martian concludes everything in the Australian economy is going surprisingly well, and the economic managers don’t have any kind of problem at present. But they - and you and I - know better. The economic managers have, in fact, got plenty to worry about. Why? Because our economy is being hit by two major, but conflicting economic shocks: the expansionary effect of our exceptionally favourable terms of trade and the mining construction boom, and the contractionary effect of the accompanying high exchange rate.

The problem facing the economic managers at present is to ensure the net effect of those two conflicting forces continues to leave the economy growing at trend, with inflation within the target zone and unemployment neither much lower nor much higher than is now. For most of last year, the RBA’s biggest worry was that the economy would grow too strongly and inflation pressure would start to build. But that didn’t happen - partly because worries about what’s happening in the rest of the world dampened the confidence of consumers and businesses - and the economy didn’t grow as fast as forecast. Inflation is actually lower than expected, so now the RBA is focused on ensuring growth is fast enough to prevent much rise in unemployment.

The three-speed economy

Another way of saying the economy is not as problem-free as a Martian might think is to say, as so many people do, we have a two-speed economy: the part linked with mining is growing very strongly, while the part hit by the high dollar is growing only slowly. Similarly, the main mining states, Queensland and Western Australia, are in the fast lane, but the other states are in the slow lane. Actually, economic theory tells us it’s more accurate to think of the resources boom and the high dollar causing a three-speed economy. The third and middle lane is for the ‘non-tradeables sector’ - those mainly service industries that don’t export their product or compete against imports, so aren’t directly affected by the high dollar, but do benefit from their (and their customers’) access to cheaper imports. Industries and states in this middle lane won’t be growing as fast as the mining-related industries, but nor will they be as hard-hit as manufacturing and tourism.

The big problem: structural change

But perhaps the best way to think of it is that the problem facing the economy at present isn’t the usual cyclical problem - is the economy growing too fast or too slow? - but is more structural in nature. Economists argue that the exceptionally high prices we’re getting for our coal and iron ore exports and the huge investment we’re seeing in building new mines and liquid-gas facilities represents a long-lasting change in the rest of the world’s demand for our mineral (and rural) commodity exports. This necessitates change in the structure of our industries, with relatively more resources of labour and capital going to mining, and relatively fewer resources going to all other industries, but particularly manufacturing and service exports. Economists further argue that the high exchange rate is the market’s painful way of helping to bring about this structural change. They say that using government subsidies or other forms of protection to help our industries resist change reduces the efficiency with which the nation’s resources are allocated.

Retailing is another industry facing structural change as consumers shift their preferences from goods to services, and as the internet gives consumers access to overseas markets where retail prices are lower. This change is not related to the resources boom, but is related to the end of a long period when consumption grew faster than household income.

So the economic managers are having to manage the economy at a time when it is being hit by a lot of painful structural change. Let’s look at what they’re doing with the main economic instruments - or arms of policy - they use, starting with monetary policy, then moving to fiscal policy.

Monetary policy

Monetary policy is conducted by the RBA independent of the elected government. It is the primary instrument by which the managers of the economy pursue internal balance - low inflation and low unemployment. MP is conducted in accordance with the inflation target: to hold the inflation rate between 2 and 3 pc, on average, over the cycle. The primary instrument of MP is the overnight cash rate, which the RBA controls via market operations.

Aware the unemployment rate was only a little above the NAIRU and concerned the resources boom could lead to excessive wage growth, the RBA stood ready to tighten monetary policy throughout most of 2011. But, partly because of the lingering effect of the Queensland floods in early 2011, the economy did not accelerate as the RBA had forecast. Instead, the outlook for growth in the North Atlantic economies worsened, business and consumer confidence weakened and inflation continued to improve. So the RBA cut the cash rate by a click in both November and December of 2011, lowering it to 4.25 pc. In May it cut by a further 0.5 point to 3.75 pc, more than offsetting the banks’ efforts to preserve their profit margins and producing a net fall in the interest rates actually paid by households and businesses. With market interest rates a little below their long-run average, the stance of monetary policy is now mildly expansionary.

Fiscal policy

Fiscal policy - the manipulation of government spending and taxation in the budget - is conducted according to the Gillard government’s medium-term fiscal strategy: ‘to achieve budget surpluses, on average, over the medium term’. This means the primary role of discretionary fiscal policy is to achieve ‘fiscal sustainability’ - that is, to ensure we don’t build up an unsustainable level of public debt. However, the strategy leaves room for the budget’s automatic stabilisers to be unrestrained in assisting monetary policy in pursuing internal balance. It also leaves room for discretionary fiscal policy to be used to stimulate the economy and thus help monetary policy manage demand in exceptional circumstances - such as the GFC - provided the stimulus measures are temporary.

After the onset of the GFC, tax collections fell heavily, and they have yet to fully recover. The Rudd government applied considerable fiscal stimulus to the economy by a large but temporary increase in government spending.

The government’s ‘deficit exit strategy’ requires it to avoid further tax cuts and limit the real growth in government spending to 2 pc a year until the budget has returned to a surplus equivalent to 1 pc of GDP. The delay in returning to surplus is caused not by continuing high spending but by continuing weak revenue.

In this year’s budget the government shifted its spending plans around to allow it to keep its election promise to budget for (then actually achieve) a tiny budget surplus in 2012-13. After allowing for unimportant changes in the timing of spending and the effect on demand of particular budget measures, the stance of fiscal policy is much less contractionary than it appears to be, with the Treasury secretary estimating the effect to be less than 1 pc of GDP, which is still significant.

Macro bottom line

Should the contractionary stance of fiscal policy combine with other factors to weaken aggregate demand, the RBA has scope to counter this by further loosening monetary policy from its present stance of ‘mildly expansionary’.

Microeconomic policy

The objective of microeconomic policy is to achieve faster economic growth and make the economy more flexible in its response to economic shocks. Whereas macroeconomic policy seeks to stabilise demand over the short term, microeconomic policy works on the supply side of the economy over the medium to longer term, seeking to raise its productivity, efficiency and flexibility. It does this mainly by reducing government intervention in markets to increase competitive pressure. Much microeconomic reform since the mid-80s - including floating the dollar, deregulating the financial system, reducing protection, reforming the tax system, privatising or commercialising government-owned businesses and decentralising wage-fixing - has made the economy significantly less inflation-prone. In the second half of the 90s it also led to a marked improvement in productivity. But the micro reform push has fallen off and much of the government’s attention is directed to other reforms: the introduction of a minerals resource rent tax and the introduction of a price on carbon.

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Tax reform lost in saga of expediency

Whether led by Kevin Rudd or Julia Gillard, this government has little sense of strategic direction. Everything it does is a response to the needs of the moment. Consider the chequered history of the Henry inquiry into tax reform, the final blow to which was delivered in the budget last month.

The inquiry had its genesis in one of the first of Rudd's silly ideas, the Twenty-20 summit. Bring a bunch of bright people together with a pile of butcher's paper and who knows what good ideas they could come up with?

The business people attending came up with the world's most predictable idea: what this country needs is more tax reform. What they really meant was that taxes should be changed so they paid less. When it comes to contributing to the public debate, our business people are nothing if not chancers.

But Rudd was desperate for something solid to "take forward" to prove the summit hadn't been a complete fiasco. His need, I suspect, became the Treasury secretary's opportunity. No one in this country knows more, or cares more, about tax reform than Dr Ken Henry. He's been part of all the considerable reform we've had since the mid-1980s.

Knowing his time as Treasury secretary would come to an end, he must have seen his chance to make a last big mark on the future. Of course, his idea of tax reform was quite a bit different from that fondly imagined by business.

The inquiry was ordered to report by Christmas 2009. Really? A report about a subject as contentious as tax reform - with all its winners and losers - set to lob not many months before the next election?

But apparently Labor had a plan. Its coffers were overflowing with proceeds from the resources boom. It could go into the next election promising sweeping tax reform and using all the surplus revenue to square away any losers. What's the problem?

Then the global financial crisis. It quickly emptied the government's coffers and left it spending big to stimulate the economy. Oh no! We've got this blasted tax report coming which will propose all these changes everyone will hate.

By the time Henry reported, Rudd was in a terminal funk over the Senate's rejection of his carbon pollution reduction scheme and the failure of the Copenhagen climate change summit. Rather than putting the tax report out for public discussion he delayed looking at it, pretending to be too busy visiting dozens of hospitals to discuss health reform with the nearest pretty nurse.

Then someone had a bright idea. Among Henry's hundred-plus proposals was one for some new-fangled tax on the miners' economic rents. We could rip a lot of brass off the miners, then use the proceeds to cherry-pick Henry's other proposals.

At no net cost to the budget we could take a tax reform package into the election. We'd spread the proceeds around a host of interest groups. They'd love it and we'd have a reform program only the miners didn't like. But there'd be little public sympathy for them.

We'd cut the company tax rate by a couple of points, give something nice to small business and, above all, get the union secretaries and superannuation industry off our back by covering the budgetary cost of increasing super contributions to 12 per cent.

But caught off guard by a new tax no one understood (and which would raise twice as much as the government imagined), the miners - led by BHP Billiton's Marius Kloppers - opted to campaign for the government's defeat. They ran TV ads assuring the mug punters the mining tax would cost 'em their jobs.

Rudd's losing fight with the miners, coming on top of his collapse in the polls when he walked away from "the great moral challenge of our time", cost him his job. Gillard decided to buy off the big three miners - BHP, Rio and Xstrata - at any price so she could rush to an election and capitalise on her imagined honeymoon with the voters. The deal she did replaced an incomprehensible mining tax with a dog's breakfast designed on the run by the big miners. It came at the expense of their pipsqueak contemporaries - including T. Forrest, G. Rinehart and C. Palmer - and big business generally, which had its cut in the company tax rate halved.

Time passes, Gillard's poll ratings are at rock bottom and we get to this year's budget. With all the whingeing about the cost of living it would be great to give the punters a bribe, but how could we afford it when we're moving heaven and earth to get the budget back to surplus?

Another bright idea. Since everyone's lost interest in tax reform, why not unpick the remnants of the tax-reform package and use the savings to "spread the benefits of the boom to families" with votes?

Why not can the cut in the company tax rate (our stocks with business couldn't go any lower), postpone the higher concessional super contributions cap and forget the new standard deduction and the discount on tax on interest income?

Instead of using the mining tax to cut taxes elsewhere, why not just use it to increase welfare spending? Tax reform is sooo yesterday.

But the one bloke you don't need to feel sorry for in this saga is Henry. He was never so naive as to expect a weak, hard-up government to buy a bundle of unpopular tax reforms on the eve of an election.

What he wanted was to leave his successors in Treasury and elsewhere with a detailed blueprint of the direction in which the tax system should head over coming decades. He got to leave his legacy.

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Pollies' tangled web on infrastructure spending

After all the Rudd-Gillard government has said about its wicked predecessors' failure to invest in infrastructure, what would you think if I told you it's planning to dis-invest in infrastructure in the coming financial year?

It's true - or rather, it's what the budget papers say. They say that whereas the government is expecting net capital investment spending of $4.8 billion in the financial year just ending, "net capital investment is expected to be negative $2.7 billion in 2012-13, $7.5 billion lower than in 2011-12".

Unfortunately, the hard part with the budget papers is not so much finding out what they say, it's working out what they really mean. And that's particularly hard this year because the government's been turning so many cartwheels to meet its promise to budget for a surplus.

Fortunately, when you do decipher what it means, you find it's not as bad as it sounds. But nor is it good.

Turns out the main reason net capital investment will be going backwards is that the total includes "the sale of some non-financial assets". Non-financial assets are assets you can touch - land, buildings, maybe even a highway. Which assets, exactly? We're not told - or, if we are, the news was buried somewhere I couldn't find it. The helpful description we're given is "other purposes". How much are they expecting to get for the assets? Not told that, either - except that if you jump from page 6.52 to page 9.22 in budget paper No.1, you find an item called "gains from sale of assets, $4.7 billion". Ah.

Now, the reason for our interest is, presumably, our belief that the government should be getting on with building new infrastructure. That's true if we care about the adequacy of the nation's infrastructure. It's also true if we're asking the macro-economic question: what effect is this year's budget likely to have on activity in the economy?

From either perspective, it doesn't matter whether the government continues to own existing assets - we're probably talking about buildings - or it sells those assets to someone in the private sector.

What matters is the construction of new infrastructure. So we should ignore the proceeds from asset sales. We should also ignore any other negatives included in net capital investment, such as depreciation.

That is, the best figure for our purposes is (gross) "purchases of non-financial assets". This tells us the government will be spending $8 billion next year. Ah, that's more like it. Except that it's down from $10.3 billion in the old year.

Note, however, that about 60 per cent of this refers to defence assets. That's probably not what you had in mind when thinking of "infrastructure". And it's a fall in defence spending that accounts for most of the fall in the total.

If we're trying to assess the budget's impact on economic activity, it matters whether this is spending on the purchase of equipment and weapons from overseas (which wouldn't have much effect on our economic activity) or it's spending on the building of facilities or equipment (sub-standard subs, for instance) in Australia. If there's an answer to this question, I couldn't find it.

If you're thinking new capital spending of even $8 billion isn't much in an annual budget of $370 billion, you're right. The fact is that, despite all the feds' talk about the need for more spending on infrastructure, they've always tended to leave the lion's share of capital works spending to the state governments.

It's the states that build the schools, hospitals and police stations, as well as the roads, bridges and railways. The Feds limit their direct capital spending to things such as defence and communications. If they think we need more spending on schools or highways or public housing, they give capital grants to the states.

If you keep searching until you get to page 9.21, you find the states will be getting capital grants of $5.4 billion in the coming year - though this is less than half the $11.7 billion they got in the old year.

Not good. Except something tells me this is where the creative accountants have been at work, shifting spending out of the would-be surplus year back into the old deficit year. So, in reality, probably not such a negative to economic activity as it looks to be.

Do you get the feeling we're trespassing into areas the government would prefer us to keep our noses out of? One area where inquiry is unwelcome is the difference between the expected and much-trumpeted "underlying cash surplus" of $1.5 billion and the never-mentioned "headline cash deficit" of $8.7 billion.

This distinction was introduced by Peter Costello, in reaction against the way the Hawke-Keating government used to disguise the size of its budget deficits by including proceeds from the sale of businesses such as Qantas or the Commonwealth Bank.

Costello decided to exclude from the "underlying" budget balance something now known as "net cash flows from investments in financial assets for policy purposes". Businesses such as Qantas were classed as financial assets because what the government owned was shares in those businesses, and shares are financial assets, not "real" (physical) assets.

Good move. Selling existing businesses had little effect on economic activity. It was really just an alternative way of funding the budget deficit to selling government bonds, not a way of reducing it.

But good ole Pete left himself a loophole: he didn't exclude from the underlying budget balance proceeds from the sale of non-financial assets such as land or buildings, even though the same argument applies.

And it would never have occurred to Costello that his successor would come along and, instead of selling a financial asset, would set up new government-owned businesses. Say, one that uses its government-supplied share capital to lay a broadband network around the nation. You can't say paying people to lay cables has no effect on economic activity.

Most of the difference between the underlying surplus of $1.5 billion and the headline deficit of $8.7 billion is explained by spending of $13.3 billion on the setting up of new businesses, including the NBN Co Ltd.

See what's happened? To help get the budget back to surplus, the creative accountants have, first, used a loophole to include proceeds from the sale of land and buildings when they shouldn't have and, second, used a loophole to exclude spending on infrastructure when they should have included it.

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Labor's great appetite for spending but not taxing

It's taken me too long to realise it, but when I retired for a quiet meal after the federal budget lock-up this month, it struck me: there's truth to the opposition's charge that Labor is a big spending, big taxing government. Mind you, there's not as much truth to it as Tony Abbott & Co would like us to believe.

At one level, there's no truth at all. In the coming financial year, federal government spending is expected to equal 23.5 per cent of gross domestic product. It exceeded that level in nine of the Howard government's 12 budgets.

Federal tax collections are expected to equal 22.1 per cent of GDP, well down on the 23.7 per cent they reached in 2007-08, Howard's last budget. Were tax collections still that high, the taxman would be pulling in $25 billion more than he's expecting to.

So Labor can't be accused of being a big taxing government. It may be about to introduce two new taxes - the carbon tax, worth $7 billion a year when it gets going, and the mining tax, worth $3 billion a year - but it's giving back all the proceeds. That's why its expected budget surplus is wafer-thin.

So what's the problem? Well, I'm not sure if this vintage of Labor believes in Big Government but they surely hanker after its fruits. As I'm about to show, they're always initiating big spending programs.

Why then isn't their spending adding up to more than it does? Because, as their critics on the left keep pointing out, they have a fixation on returning the budget to surplus.

How do they reconcile their desire to spend big with their desire to return to surplus? By indulging in a kind of fiscal bulimia. They go through each year greedily gobbling up all these new spending delicacies, then at budget time they put their finger down their throat and vomit what they've eaten off into future years.

Kevin Rudd came to office promising an education revolution. You may not have noticed much change but it's not for want of spending. In five years, Labor's education spending has increased 60 per cent to $30 billion a year.

Rudd also promised to fix the inadequacies of the health system. Though every doctor you meet will assure you this miserly government isn't spending nearly as much as it should, under Labor federal spending on health has increased 37 per cent to $61 billion a year.

Rudd always wanted to be able to say his new policy was the biggest and best ever. He did that in 2009 when, standing in front of a frigate, he released a defence white paper that he claimed was "the most comprehensive of the modern era".

He had a much bigger and grander vision for defence than his predecessors, which he backed up by promising to spend a lot more money: a more generous indexation arrangement, plus extension of the commitment to real annual growth of 3 per cent.

But this is the most remarkable example of fiscal bulimia. In the four budgets since then, Labor has never once delivered the spending increases it promised. Another example is the deferral of Labor's promise to raise its overseas aid payments to 0.5 per cent of gross national income.

In all his time in power, Howard studiously avoided increasing the base rate of the age pension, knowing it would be far too expensive. But Rudd did it in his second budget - at a cost that, with indexation to average earnings and an ageing population, will grow and grow as the years pass.

For years, the self-seeking urgers in the superannuation industry sought to persuade the government to increase the rate of compulsory super contributions for employees. Howard always resisted but Labor gave in. Between 2013 and 2019, the rate will be increased from 9 per cent to 12 per cent of ordinary-time wages.

Ostensibly, the considerable cost to the budget of the concessional tax treatment of super contributions will be covered by revenue from the mining tax. But that cost will grow and grow - at a much faster rate than the tax grows.

Labor was keen to introduce paid maternity leave. In the good old days, a government would simply have imposed the cost of this on employers. But business gets a lot more privileged treatment these days, so this significant cost is being picked up the taxpayer.

Howard resisted pressure to increase federal spending on infrastructure but not Rudd. His greatest project is the gold-plated, Rolls-Royce national broadband network (though much of its cost is "off-budget").

You might think all this munificence came from Rudd, not Julia Gillard. Until we come to this year's budget. It includes greatly increased spending on dental health, taking us another step down the road to expanding Medicare to include dentists.

And it commits $1 billion to making a start on a national disability insurance scheme. When fully introduced, the scheme will cost $6 billion, maybe $8 billion a year. How would this cost be financed? Gillard doesn't know or care.

I must make it clear I approve of most of these new spending commitments. And I'm prepared to pay more tax to cover them. But Gillard and her party would run a mile before admitting taxes will need to be higher, not lower.

If Abbott inherits this grossly overcommitted budget - bringing with him his promises to abolish the two new taxes - just watch him walk away from Labor's grand spending projects: the national disability scheme, the overseas aid promise, the national broadband network, big education spending, the grand defence plan and the increase in super contributions.

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Rudd's grandiose defence plan never flew

I'm no Colonel Blimp, but by far the biggest loser from all the fiscal bulldozing Wayne Swan had to do to budget for a surplus in 2012-13 - and keep it for the following three years - is Defence.

He used his dozer to push billions in planned defence spending off into never never land, beyond the forward estimates. And that's not the first time. Indeed, he's been doing it in every budget since the one in 2009 when, just 10 days after Kevin Rudd had unveiled his grand defence white paper promising hugely increased spending, Swan began postponing its commitments.

For the good oil on what the budget has done on defence spending it's always necessary to wait a few weeks for Dr Mark Thomson, of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, to produce his annual analysis of the defence budget. Here's a summary - with my comments - of what he found this time.

The budget cut $5.5 billion from planned defence spending over the next four years, with spending in the coming financial year falling by more than 10 per cent in real terms, to $24 billion. In round figures, 40 per cent of this will go on personnel and 40 per cent on operating costs, leaving 20 per cent for investment in new equipment.

That real reduction is the largest annual decline since the end of the Korean War in 1953. Thomson expects spending to be equivalent to just 1.6 per cent of gross domestic product, its lowest proportion since the eve of World War II (though that doesn't necessarily prove much - what reason is there to expect our defence needs to grow at the same rate or faster than our income?)

Most of the cuts announced this month will be to investment spending: $3 billion from purchases of military equipment and $1.2 billion from the construction of facilities.

But that's not all. The budget also involves a redirection of $2.9 billion in spending within the defence budget to meet key cost pressures - areas where spending is expected to exceed previously set limits.

Most of this will be taken from planned investment in equipment. So it's the old story: whenever pollies are under budget pressure, the first thing overboard is capital works. One exception: $360 million will be saved by cutting civilian numbers by 1000 over two years.

When Rudd announced his grand plan to keep defence spending growing by 3 per cent a year in real terms, he also announced a "strategic reform program" to help cover the cost by delivering $20 billion in savings through greater efficiency.

Most of the areas where costs are growing faster than budget are areas where these efficiency savings were to be achieved. The problem seems to be partly that the savings were an accounting fiction and partly that Defence has failed to try hard enough. It would be wrong to imagine all the fault lies with the politicians.

The Defence Department's manifest failings aside, it's clear Rudd wanted a big expansion in defence spending, but neither he nor his ministers wanted it badly enough to find the money to pay for it.

Under unrelenting pressure from the opposition to prove their credentials as good fiscal managers, they gave a higher priority to getting the budget back to surplus. They won't cop any criticism from me on that.

But it's no excuse to say Rudd's grand plan was overtaken by the global financial crisis. As Thomson reminds us, the white paper was unveiled when everyone expected the crisis to hit us harder than it did.

Thomson argues Rudd's plan never added up. It had to make a clear choice about the role it wanted Defence to play in the future, then design a defence force consistent with that role, then commit to providing the necessary resources to make it happen.

It failed on each count. We're left with a Defence Department that's in disarray. It's supposed to be following a plan its political masters have sabotaged at every turn. Little wonder Julia Gillard has brought forward to next year the development of a new plan.

Let's hope this time the government formulates a plan it can afford, one consistent with its iron commitment to "fiscal sustainability" (the great buzz-phrase of this year's budget papers). This suggests it'll be a lot less superlative than Rudd's grandiose effort.

And guess what? Thomson thinks it wouldn't be such a bad thing. "For what it's worth, this author believes that Australia can responsibly adopt a less ambitious defence strategy than that set out in 2009," he says. "It's likely that the defence force we need is also the one we are willing to pay for."

But, you say, surely Tony Abbott will be the one making those decisions after 2013. Quite possibly. But don't assume his approach will be a lot different.

Thomson observes that public opinion has shifted. The strategic fears and misgivings of the post-September 11 decade have been replaced with the uncertainty and caution of the post global financial crisis decade. For the moment, at least, most people are more worried about the next financial crisis than they are about the seemingly remote prospect of a strategic crisis.

And get this: "The opposition's resistance to the latest round of cuts to defence spending has been both muted and laced with caveats. The long-standing bipartisan approach to defence policy has been trumped by bipartisan fixation on achieving a surplus."

Sure. But take a look at the dire straits decades of budget deficits have got the Europeans into and at the Americans' bitter warring over their budget. As vices go, an obsession with keeping the two sides of the budget in balance isn't high on my list of sins.

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Why we've become good savers

Who would believe it? Australia is turning into a nation of savers. We've already lifted our rate of saving - we save more than people in other developed countries - and we're likely to increase our saving rate further.

Who would believe it? Australia is turning into a nation of savers. We've already lifted our rate of saving - we save more than people in other developed countries - and we're likely to increase our saving rate further.

This the surprising message in this year's budget statement 4 - otherwise known as Treasury's sermon. The facts and figures that follow come from there.

Expressed as a proportion of gross domestic product, gross national saving fell significantly from the mid-1970s until the early 1990s. Between 1992-93 and 2004-05, it was fairly steady at 21 per cent. It began to rise in 2005-06 - well before the global financial crisis - and since the crisis it's shot up to reach almost 25 per cent last year.

This is well above the average for the developed economies of less than 19 per cent. Now, their saving rates are down because they're still trying to put the Great Recession behind them and it's arguable that some part of our increased saving since the crisis is also a passing reaction to the uncertainty it continues to cause. But we were well above them before the crisis.

The nation's rate of saving is the sum of the saving done by the three sectors of our economy: the households, the companies and the governments.

Households save when they spend less than all their income on consumption. Companies save when they retain part of their after-tax profits rather than paying all of them out in dividends. Governments save when their revenue exceeds their recurrent spending.

Most of the reason for the increase in national saving - and most of the reason for expecting it to increase further - rests with households.

The household saving rate declined steadily from the mid-1970s to the mid-noughties but then it increased significantly and is now 11.5 per cent of GDP, up from a low of just under 6 per cent in 2002-03.

One reason for this turnaround is the maturing of the compulsory superannuation system. Award-based super was introduced in 1985 but the scheme really got going in 1992, when they began phasing up employer contributions to 9 per cent of ordinary-time wages by 2002.

The value of Australia's super savings is now as much as $1.3 trillion, equivalent to 95 per cent of annual GDP (compared with the average for the developed countries of 68 per cent). Treasury estimates the scheme now makes a gross contribution to national saving of 1.5 percentage points.

Treasury says the more recent increase in household saving is likely to reflect a combination of increased consumer caution following the crisis and a return to more sustainable rates of consumption growth.

To the extent it's a return to more normal rates of growth in consumer spending, it's likely to be lasting. To the extent it's just caution, retailers and others can hope it will go away as all the upheaval stemming from the global crisis is resolved, people become more confident and lower somewhat the rate at which they're saving.

Now, no one can say how much of our higher household saving rate comes from lasting ''structural change'' and how much comes from passing caution. Until more of history unfolds, we can only make guesses.

But my guess is most of it is structural and not much of it is passing. In any case, I can't see the global economy becoming a much more placid place any time soon. Europe's weakness could roll on for a decade.

I think the econocrats are holding out false hope to retailers and others with their talk of ''the cautious consumer'', implying the tough times will end as soon as shoppers cheer up. It would be better to encourage the retailers to get on with adjusting to the new world they live in.

Treasury says the fall in household saving up to the mid-noughties primarily reflected a prolonged, but essentially one-off, structural adjustment to financial deregulation from the early '80s and the transition to a low-inflation (and hence low nominal interest-rate) environment from the early '90s.

Easier access to credit and lower rates led to greater borrowing, rising house prices, high levels of confidence and - thanks to big capital gains - people reducing their saving rate and allowing their consumption spending to grow faster than their incomes.

This adjustment process is likely to have been a significant driver of change in household saving. From the second half of the noughties, however, households began to slow their accumulation of debt and, as a result, the household saving rate began to rise.

With this process now likely to have been completed, households as a whole can be expected to consolidate their financial position over coming years by returning to more normal levels of saving and borrowing.

That's a quick explanation of why we've gone back to being good savers. But why expect our saving rate to go on rising? Partly because our (largely foreign-owned) mining companies are retaining a high proportion of their huge after-tax profits (which they're using to help finance their investment in additional production capacity).

Partly because the federal politicians (and their state counterparts) are struggling to get their budgets back into operating surplus, meaning governments are shifting from dissaving to saving.

But mainly because the compulsory super scheme will soon begin phasing up the contribution rate from 9 per cent of wages, reaching 12 per cent in 2019-20. Treasury estimates this will make a further gross contribution to the national saving rate of 1.5 percentage points of GDP over the next 25 years, with most of that expected to occur over the next decade.

Just as every punter knows in their gut that deficit and debt are always and everywhere a bad thing (it ain't true), so everyone knows saving is always a good thing. But what's so good about it?

The main reason people save is to smooth their consumption over time. For instance, you consume less while you're working so you can have a higher standard of living when you're retired. You can even use saving to pass some of your income on to the next generation. And saving makes you more resilient by providing a buffer against unexpected adverse events.

At a national level, borrowing less and saving more makes us more resilient to possible external shocks. And it helps moderate inflation pressure and so allows interest rates to be lower.

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