Today’s blog was published as a feature “A lose-lose election for home buyers” by The Age Business. Click here to download this post as a PDF file (with charts).
Both Liberal and Labor housing policies will make Australia’s debt and housing affordability crises worse. The only difference between the two is how much damage they will [...]

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Tables like the ones below take my breath away when I see them for the first time–because the story they tell is worse than any I would have dared make up. As I noted in the interview with Kerry O’Brien on the 7.30 Report, real wages have increased since 1990, and since Australia’s last election [...]

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I provided a number of comparisons of real wages, mortgage payments, interest rates and the like in my interview on the 7.30 Report this evening. I’ll post a table containing those data by tomorrow morning.
If you’re a new visitor and would like to receive my Debtwatch Report, which Kerry mentioned in tonight’s interview, please click [...]

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Both parties will make much of their economic management credentials in this election campaign.
Many Australians, on the other hand, seem convinced that the economy would do as well regardless of which party were in power.
The average punter has it right: luck, rather than skill, has determined which governments in retrospect came up smelling like roses [...]

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Dear All,
Below is the press release from the Centre for Policy Development for the launch of my “mini-book” on debt. Please pass the news on, and I hope to meet some of you at the launch.
You load sixteen tons, and what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt”
(Merle Travis, 1946)
Australia has been on a 45 year [...]

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I expect–and hope–that the tenor of discussion at this month’s RBA Board meeting will be very different to last month’s. In August, I imagine, the community members of the Board listened sagely as the RBA’s economists explained why the risk of future inflation had risen, why this justified a “pre-emptive strike” of raising interest rates, [...]

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The 7.30 Report is making good use of the web with its extended interview feature. These are the edited highlights of the major interviews it does for stories, at best ten per cent of which sees the light of day in the final story.
Here is the link to the extended interview with me for their [...]

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Those of you who missed last night’s 7.30 Report (like myself–I was playing tennis at the time!) should check the link below:
 American mortgage shock waves hit Australia
Apologies again for a tardy update cycle on this blog, but as you can imagine, I’m busy as hell right now. When the dust settles–in early October–I hope to [...]

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To its credit, the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics, Finance and Public Administration decided to hold an “Inquiry into home loan lending practices and processes“, in the form of a one-day round-table discussion with interested parties.
They invited a diverse group: all the major banks were asked, as well as representative of non-bank lenders, mortgage [...]

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Oh dear. When Nassim Khadim from The Age asked me to comment yesterdy on the electoral assertion being made by the Liberal Party–that rising State debt was putting upward pressure on interest rates–I responded that the assertion was:
“Total, total bullshit. It’s like saying that somebody dropped a pebble into the ocean and that caused a tsunami. And you can [...]

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