Douglas Adams’ brilliant comic farce The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy describes Earth as residing in sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha, one of “the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral Arm of the Galaxy” and being inhabited by “ape-descended life forms” who “are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea”.
Sometimes when I return to Australia, I feel that I’ve arrived in the planet’s sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha. Here, the economic debate is so primitive that people still think the economy can be controlled by tinkering with the rate of interest.
Is inflation rising? Then put the rate of interest up one and a half times as fast as inflation is increasing. Is output falling below trend? Then drop the rate of interest by half as much as output has fallen. Then adjourn for drinks.
