Australia-Japan Economic Outlook Conference
Manuel Panagiotopoulos of Australian-Japan Economic Intelligence has once again staged an excellent Australia-Japan Economic Outlook Conference. HSBC chief economist John Edwards gave a presentation on the Australian economy, which ran through a host of macroeconomic indicators showing their best performance in 30 to 50 years and a housing downturn that is shaping up as the most modest in 20 years. Proving that there is no market for good news, this had at least one conference participant demanding to know when it would all end. While nobody is arguing that the business cycle has been abolished, the many who predicted disaster on the back of the downturn in house prices have been thoroughly discredited. John Edwards has been one of the few to have argued consistently against this view. US pundits, take note!
There was also some impromptu ridicule heaped on The Economist magazine (and with absolutely no prompting from me!) Edwards said that he found The Economist ‘unnecessarily somber,’ a more polite version of the critique of the magazine we have been running here. While there was also some positive comment about the magazine’s recent coverage of oil prices, this was presented as the exception rather than the rule. As The Economist’s circulation breaks new records, it seems to be taken less and less seriously in circles where it once commanded considerable respect.
posted on 04 August 2005 by skirchner
in Economics
(2) Comments | Permalink | Main
|
Comments
No one would deny that AUS and US economic performance over the nineties-naughties has been splendid. But this boom has somewhat fortuitous aspects which have massively reduced the cost of both secure investment capital and quality consumer goods:
1. End of the Cold War - resources used to make martial swords freed to be invested into civilian ploughshares;
2. Rise of PRC/IND - 2 billion persons with average IQ of ~100 freed from statism and unleashed onto global industrial system;
3. Technology Innovation - the industrial application of info-tech revolution made possible by the nerds and geeks in academia and militaria.
None of these massive power shifts had anything much to do with any specially worthy institutional reforms or individual performances conducted recently by agents within the Anglosphere. But they have allowed Anglosphere agencies to engage in an orgy of capital speculation and consumer satisfaction whilst running national savings down to zero levels.
Posted by Jack Strocchi on 08/04 at 10:36 PM
The other AUS housing busts, in the early eighties and the early nineties, proceeded economic downturns characterised by interest rate hikes. We are now having a housing downturn in the midst of a continuing economic boom and historicly low interest rates. This conjunction of events should be cause for apprehension, rather than triumphalism, from the realty boosting sector of the economy.
Exactly how are the Anglophone economies going to be world competitive if the service they have to offer is home rennovation?
Posted by Jack Strocchi on 08/11 at 05:27 PM