I was beginning to like Andrew Hauser. He is sensible so far and has the best hair do in central banking:
RBA deputy governor Andrew Hauser, also addressing the summit, offered some comfort by warning against getting carried away with one inflation number.
“It will be a bad mistake to set policy on the basis of one number, and we don’t intend to do that,” Mr Hauser said.
He said the bank would look at the June quarter inflation number, to be released next month, as well as the latest figures on retail trade, employment and business conditions.
My own view is that the RBA has the disinflation environment on track, with households in deep recession and the supply side of the economy booming. This is very disinflationary set of variables over time.
This was born out in the last monthly inflation number, which fell -0.1% and showed reasonable progress on slowing services inflation as unit labour costs collapsed.
The big unknown is what profligate Treasurer Jim Chalmers does to the outlook with his mad spending.
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However, my putative enjoyment of Hauser was cut short when the rotting head of the AFR fish chimed in with the following after interviewing Hauser:
…Modern prosperity harks back to Australia’s 19th-century “working man’s paradise” that aimed to throw off English class divisions and was infused with the utopian ideals of activist-journalist William Lane.
…The political institutions, legal system and bureaucracy praised by Hauser mostly hark back to Australia’s adapted British inheritance. This largely explains why, after being similarly prosperous in the late 19th century, resource-rich Argentina (GDP per capita $US13,700) so woefully trailed Australia.
…In contrast to the Brits, lucky Australians have then received a national pay rise in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine as the prices of their exports have soared to record levels relative to the price they pay for their imports.
Anybody with an ounce of history knows that a disaffected William Lane was so horrified at Australian graft that he fled to Paraguay to found the doomed socialist utopia of “New Australia”.
He is rolling in his grave at being invoked by Michael Stutchbury, rent-seeking king of the AFR.
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That’s the rub. We can talk about our luck until the cows come home but it does us no good. What matters is that the luck has run out and most Australians are getting poorer.
In contrast to the Brits, Australians have an immense energy endowment that was mercilessly abused by war-profiteering cartels from 20,000kms away.
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Aussies did not see much, if any, of the national pay rise following the Ukraine War. It was siphoned off by global energy raiders that pay no tax, few royalties, and massively overcharge at home for such endowments as gas.
This was a key component of the unprecedented 7% real income smash that overtook households in the last two years.
This all happened under the watchful eye of Stutchbury’s AFR, which constantly references structural reform with one hand while obliterating it in defence of vested interests with the other.
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The true inheritance of Australian institutions is the decadence and populism of the Rum Corp, and its moral descendant, the Australian Financial Review.