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Politicised Treasury bites own tail, covers for Turnbull
Shadow treasurer Chris Bowen is right: One of the Abbott-Turnbull government's various acts of economic vandalism is its politicisation of the once-proud federal Treasury.
Ross Gittins is economics editor of the SMH and an economic columnist for The Age. His books include Gittins' Guide to Economics, Gittinomics and The Happy Economist.
Shadow treasurer Chris Bowen is right: One of the Abbott-Turnbull government's various acts of economic vandalism is its politicisation of the once-proud federal Treasury.
What would economic race-calling be without its little excitements? As you may possibly have heard, this week's news is that the economy has contracted - shrunk, gone backwards - by 0.5 per cent.
Last week in front of 1400 people at a Fairfax Media subscriber event I was outed as a "pathological optimist" by an anonymous reader, who wanted to know how I got that way.
If Treasury wants to start acting more like economists than accountants, a good place to start would be to urge its political masters to seize on the opportunity presented by the school funding "compact" proposed by the Grattan Institute.
Conventional economics is falling apart, no longer making the sense we thought it made.
The efficiency dividend has become a euphemism for indiscriminate compulsory redundancies.
America's rate of growth has been slowing for decades, starting long before the onset of the global financial crisis.
If I were an Australian politician I'd think hard about the ascension of Trump before I drew conclusions for local consumption.
How has poor little Oz managed to keep our economy growing continuously for 25 years while, in the same period, other economies have suffered a recession or even two? We've had good insurance policies.
How about we take a short break from worrying about the new job Donald Trump has lined up for himself and think about our own jobs.
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