Global Economy
Quantitative easing was not a 'beggar-thy-neighbour' policy
It seems my colleague Stephen Grenville is somewhat sceptical of quantitative easing (QE). He says 'QE might have been an admirable second-best policy, but it was still "beggar…
Julie Bishop goes to Tehran
To everyone's surprise, it was announced on Monday that Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop intends to travel to Tehran in April 2015. The visit isn't about the nuclear…
Can LNG continue to fuel Papua New Guinea's economic growth?
2015 has been heralded as the year when Papua New Guinea (PNG) will enjoy the highest GDP growth rate in the world, on the back of its first full year of liquefied natural gas…
The 'beggar-thy-neighbour' currency wars
Leon Berkelmans is in good company in defending the policy actions which have come to be described as 'currency wars'.
Ben Bernanke gave the same defence of the US Fed's actions…
Does it matter if Australia is no longer among the top 20 largest economies?
A recent report by PwC, The World in 2050, suggests that Australia could slip from 19th largest economy in the world in 2014 to 28th in 2050.
The report comes from the UK and…
A currency war would be no bad thing
The European Central Bank has finally begun to engage in quantitative easing. The euro depreciated on the news, which is good for the Europeans but bad for the rest of the world,…
How Greece and Europe can both win
The press is making much of the academic qualifications of Greece's new finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis. His specialisation is economic game theory, which in this case might be…
SA's Royal Commission into nuclear energy: Let's talk about waste
South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill has announced the establishment of a Royal Commission to consider Australia's, and specifically South Australia's, possible future role in…
Do multinational corporations pay all the tax they should?
Is this a silly question to ask, given the reported low taxes paid by Google, Apple, Yahoo, Starbucks and others? The G20 and OECD think there is a major problem and have launched…
How much is too much? The debt mystery
The 2008 financial crisis left no doubt that ill-considered debt can cause major damage not just to an individual country, but to the global economy.
You might think that by now,…