How Morrison can give us a bright economic future

A big part of getting economic life back to normal involves restoring people’s faith that the future will be full of opportunity for progress. But that ain’t easy because the gloom of recession kills our belief that things could ever get better. And the longer we think like that, the truer it becomes. So Scott Morrison needs to accept the paradox that returning the economy to normal demands that we don’t return to squabbling...

Read more >>

Economic managers bank on us being smart as the average bear

It’s a lovely, comforting way to think about our economic problem. To beat the virus, we’ve had to put the economy into hibernation, but now it’s time for the bear to come out of its cave and get back to normal living. And it seems that’s just what Reserve Bank governor Dr Philip Lowe expects to happen. The "baseline scenario" he outlined this week sees real gross domestic product falling by about 10 per cent over the first...

Read more >>

Hard lessons on how recessions work and why we hate them

Forgive me for boasting about how old I am, but this coronacession – aka the Great Lockdown – will be the fourth severe recession of my career as an economic journalist. That makes recessions my special subject, though I’ve not had much call to talk about them for almost 30 years. I was too young to remember much of Bob Menzies’ Credit Squeeze, which came within a whisker of tossing him out of office in 1961. But I was established...

Read more >>

First the economy needs CPR. We'll worry about reform later

I can’t take seriously all those people saying we mustn’t waste a crisis, but seize this great opportunity to introduce sweeping economic reform. It’s like telling a baby who hasn’t yet learnt to walk it should start training for the Olympics. It’s true, of course, that we won’t get back to economic life as we used to know it – that is, knew it before the global financial crisis, more than a decade ago – until we get back to...

Read more >>

After the anti-social lockdown comes the anti-jobs recession

Until now, old farts like me have thought it a terrible thing that next to no one under 50 has any experience of how terrible recessions are. Even ABC guru Dr Norman Swan sees the costs of the lockdown as mainly social: the boredom, loneliness, anxiety, depression, suicide and domestic violence. Really? That’s as bad as it gets, eh? But at least our lack of herd immunity from unrealistic expectations means only us old-timers...

Read more >>

Morrison and the medicos must also avoid complacency

They say Australians always respond well to a crisis, and it seems it's true. Even in these days of disposable leaders, Kevin Rudd deftly stopped the global financial crisis from sucking us into the Great Recession, and now Scott Morrison has got on top of the corona crisis in a way few would have expected. His approval rating has soared. But I still wouldn't want to be in his shoes. Why not? Because, as an old econocrat explained...

Read more >>

How would Jesus treat people on the dole?

Since it’s Easter, let me tell you about something that’s long puzzled me: how can an out-and-proud Pentecostalist such as Prime Minister Scott Morrison be leading the most un-Christian government I can remember? Fortunately, however, the virus crisis seems to be bringing out his more caring side. Many people think being a Christian means being obsessed with sexual matters - abortion, homosexuality and same-sex marriage – plus,...

Read more >>

Some major contagions have nothing to do with you-know-what

It’s a long weekend so, though we’re barred from enjoying it in the usual way, let’s at least forget the V-word. How about a quiz? Let’s say the government is preparing for the outbreak of an unusual disease (no, not that kind of disease) that, should we take no action, is expected to kill 600 people. The government could act to combat the disease in either of two ways. If program A is adopted, 200 people will be saved. If...

Read more >>

For this to work, we must really be 'all in this together'

There are two ways Scott Morrison can play this coronacession: he can spread the pain as fairly as possible, or he can yield to all his political instincts and play favourites. You know: lifters get looked after, leaners take their chances. Those my tribe judge to be not "having a go" won’t be given a go. Fortunately, Sunday’s second, $66-billion assistance package suggests Morrison’s trying hard to overcome his instincts,...

Read more >>

It's the coronacession: closing down on doctors' orders

It’s now clear that we – like most countries – are already in a recession that promises to be long and severe. It will be a recession unlike any we’ve previously experienced. Why? Because it’s happening under doctors’ orders. So it deserves a unique name: the coronacession. It’s taken a few weeks for this to become obvious, mainly because economists don’t know much about epidemiology and it’s taken the nation’s medical experts...

Read more >>

At last we’ve been shown the virus game plan. Boring

I grew up in the Great Depression. Well, not really, but there were times when it certainly felt like it. The Depression was my father’s favourite topic of breakfast conversation and I got to hear a lot about it, particularly the questionable behaviour of someone called Jack Lang. It wasn’t until long after my father had been "promoted to Glory", as the Salvos say, I learnt from my sisters that the Depression had been his finest...

Read more >>

Avoiding the R-word won't be as easy as boosting June quarter

Sorry to be blunt, but anyone who thinks avoiding a second quarter of decline in real gross domestic product means avoiding recession needs a lesson in economics. It’s clear that Scott Morrison’s $17.6 billion stimulus package – what you might call Kevin Rudd with Liberal characteristics – was aimed primarily at boosting economic activity in the June quarter. Fully $11 billion of the $17.6 billion will be spent or rebated from...

Read more >>

Too soon to say how hard virus will hit economy

To judge by the gyrations of the world’s sharemarkets, the coronavirus has us either off to hell in a handcart or the markets are panicking about something bad that’s happening, but they’re not sure what’s happening, how long it will last or how bad it will end up being. I’d go with the latter. So would Reserve Bank deputy governor Dr Guy Debelle. He said in a speech this week that there’s been a large increase in the financial...

Read more >>

Morrison's trickle-down stimulus may not be enough

I hope I’m wrong, but I doubt if Scott Morrison’s $17.6 billion stimulus package is big enough to stop the temporary shock of the coronavirus outbreak becoming a longer-lasting blow to the economy. We live in an economy that produces goods and services worth $2 trillion a year. To have a significant impact on the economy we needed measures worth at least 1 per cent of that – about $20 billion in their first year. To be fair,...

Read more >>

It will take time to get used to living with the new virus

The coronavirus is deadly – it will end up killing quite a few oldies – but we (and the rest of the world) are making so much fuss about it mainly because it’s new. Thanks to that fuss, it’s likely to do more damage to the economy than it does to life and limb. How much damage we do to the economy – and whether it lasts a few months or a few years – will be determined largely by the way Scott Morrison and his ministers manage...

Read more >>

Back in Black one minute, loose talk of recession the next

For most of last year, people kept asking me if our slowing economy was headed for recession. I always replied that we weren’t, but that our chronic weakness left us exposed to any adverse shock. Turns out we’ve been hit by two. According to Treasury’s estimates, the bushfires will subtract 0.2 percentage points from whatever growth we get from other sources in the present March quarter, and the response to the coronavirus outbreak...

Read more >>

Coronavirus will hit an economy that’s already weak

It’s good to know the economy wasn’t as weak as we’d been told, but it’s not nearly good enough. Not when we know it’s getting walloped this quarter by the bushfires and the coronavirus. This time three months ago, we were told that real gross domestic product had grown by just 1.7 per cent over the year to September. This week the Australian Bureau of Statistics announced that real GDP grew by 0.5 per cent during the December...

Read more >>

Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow the virus won't get you

The coronavirus will harm the economy – ours and the world's – but how much damage it does will be determined not just by how far and how fast the virus spreads, but by what the government does to protect us from that spread and what people take it into their heads to do to protect themselves. There's a good chance the reaction to the threat of the virus will do far more damage to the economy – and the livelihoods of the people...

Read more >>

Productivity problem? Start at the bottom, not the top

Whenever we’re told we’re not achieving much improvement in our productivity, a lot of people assume it must be something the government’s done – or more likely, failed to do. Such as? Isn’t it obvious? Failed to cut the tax on companies and high income-earners. But though the national rate of productivity improvement is merely the sum of the performances of all the industries that make up the economy, no one ever imagines the...

Read more >>