• COMMENT

Multiply the number of shirts worn in Australia by the time it takes to remove their natural wrinkles, and you pretty much have the national productivity crisis laid out on your ironing board.

One of the small pleasures of my year was watching the deft political manoeuvrings of Thomas Cromwell in the TV miniseries of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall.

Paul Sadler Swimland is the latest franchise network to become embroiled in underpayment of wages and have the spotlight put on its enterprise agreement.

• COMMENT

Markets are still behaving as if they will get the "good Trump" (tax cuts and fiscal stimulus) rather than the "bad Trump" (trade wars), despite mounting evidence to the contrary.

Spend much time with economists around this time of year, and you will hear about the dreadful inefficiency of exchanging gifts. But there's a higher logic to the gift economy.

• COMMENT

There will be no relaxed Christmas break for Kerry Stokes and the directors of his Seven West Media.

• COMMENT

In this uncertain world, there are still a few unalterable facts of political life. For example, Republicans always do what Charles and David Koch, the billionaire bankrollers of right-wing politics nationwide, tell them.

• COMMENT

Corporate Australia has wound down for the silly season, but the scandals haven’t abated.

• COMMENT

Some economists worry the world economy isn't growing fast enough. It's slowing down and reaching the point of "secular stagnation".

• COMMENT

The fixation with the budget deficit being a few billion one way or the other is arguing about the fleas on the dog – it's economic growth that decides whether the dog is fed or not.

• COMMENT

Despite the occasional talk, politicians aren't prepared to do what's necessary to fix the problem of employers not paying superannuation.

• ANALYSIS

The saga of Bellamy's demonstrates just how rapidly a company can move from being a sharemarket darling with seemingly limitless growth prospects to a sharemarket pariah with a questionable business model.

• COMMENT

Since going public in June 2013, Commonwealth Bank whistleblower Jeff Morris is contacted at least once a month by company insiders.

• COMMENT

One managing-director embroiled in scandal is perhaps unlucky: to suffer three in a row starts to look serious.

• COMMENT

A new OECD paper has looked at how tax systems, including Australia's, effectively discriminate against married women.

• COMMENT

Billionaire media mogul Kerry Stokes has a very important decision to make.

• COMMENT

What an amazing difference 19 months can make for parliamentary inquiries into housing affordability and ownership.

Our politicians on both sides have terrible trouble working out how supply works.

• COMMENT

When Col Fullagar isn’t jumping out of helicopters volunteering as a firefighter in remote areas of NSW he works in the cutthroat world of life insurance.

• COMMENT

You can read James Packer's sell down and impending exit out of the Macau market many ways.

• COMMENT

When a guy with an assault rifle walks into a pizza joint to "self-investigate" the made-up conspiracy theory he found on the internet about a non-existent child-prostitution ring, there's no doubt we've got a problem.

• COMMENT

It is possible to make sense of what's happening in the labour market, but only if you follow a few rules.

• COMMENT

Congratulations are in order as ScoMo's epiphany represents a major break with the Abbott/Hockey dogma of all government debt being evil.

• COMMENT

More people are going to have to take risks, because jobs can't be guaranteed, even with a degree.

• COMMENT

The Fed's well-telegraphed move early this morning is a key part of why our central bank has not cut its cash rate again.

• COMMENT

The move take a position and get a slice of the spoils in the carve-up of the Tatts Group is vintage Macquarie Group.

• ANALYSIS

A new bid from financial players including Macquarie and US-based private equiteers KKR for lotteries and gaming group Tatts could scupper Tabcorp's takeover ambitions.

• COMMENT

The Australian public is the sole investor in Adani's coal export plans. We need to understand the true numbers.

• COMMENT

Fairfax is calling it dirty. At the very least it's intriguing.

• COMMENT

Imagine the task of building a city the size of Canberra every year, for the rest of this century. Or, how about creating a new city the population of Melbourne every decade?