If I was asked to nominate the wisest aphorism of all time, Mark Twain’s “History doesn’t repeat, but it sure does rhyme” would definitely be one of my top two candidates.
On song, today Wall Street is replaying the 1930s, but to a slightly different meter. With the 80th anniversary of  the Great Crash of 1929 [...]

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Kenneth Davidson has been one of the most consistent voices for sensible economic analysis in the Australian media for decades now (another I’d give a similar accolade to is Brian Toohey), and he’s written a brilliant piece in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald on the specualtive bubble that is the Australian dollar.
Davidson lays out the [...]

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As I’ve noted here earlier, the blog newsfrom1930 performs a very valuable ”reality check” for today by each day publishing a summary of the Wall Street Journal from the same day in 1930. The overwhelming flavour of reports from that time is that the Depression was over and recovery was imminent. Plus la change…
This week it’s [...]

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Thanks to all those Debtwatch readers who made donations to assist with the costs of bringing Michael to Australia for this speaking tour. Roughly A$800 has been raised–I’ve allowed $10 for every donation made since I put that message up to go to Michael’s expenses, and there have been 81 donations (many of more than [...]

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Paul Krugman sometimes introduces his more complicated posts on his blog as being “wonkish”. This post is wonkish in spades–though in the linked papers rather than the content here.
I’ve just finished the first reasonable description of my multi-sectoral monetary model of production, which I’ll be presenting at the Paul Woolley Centre for Capital Market Dysfunctionality [...]

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The Economy, How Bad Is It?
The economy is so bad:
That I got a pre-declined credit card in the mail.
I ordered a burger at McDonalds and the kid behind the counter asked, “Can you afford fries with that?”
That CEO’s are now playing miniature golf.
If the bank returns your check marked “Insufficient Funds,” you call them and [...]

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The RBA has put rates up now on the belief that the financial crisis is behind us, and it has to return to its established role of controlling inflation.
That this decision was likely was flagged by the speech by Anthony Richards last week, which implied that the RBA, having ignored the house price bubble created by [...]

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One of the keynote speakers at the 38th Australian Conference of Economists in Adelaide last week was Edward Lazear, who was Chairman of the US President’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2006-09.
In other words, he was in one of the world’s economic hotseats right when the “Great Moderation” (see also Gerard Baker’s UK Times article [...]

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2010 is shaping up as the year that the bulls and bears of the world’s last unpopped asset market bubble—Australia’s property market—will collide head on. The gap between those predicting yet another bubble, and those predicting its ultimate demise, has closed.
The bulls as always, emphasise the “fundamentals”—population-fuelled demand outstripping laggardly supply—and that “Australia is different”.
The [...]

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