It’s not obvious to the uninitiated. It’s even less obvious to the system huggers. But, make no mistake, Australia is falling apart before our very eyes.
To make this case I will use the four points of the sovereign compass that credit rating agencies use to gauge the strength of any economy: fiscal deficits and debt, institutional settings, economic income and resilience, and the credibility of monetary policy. I’ll add in one of my own, too. I’m not using this lens because this is a discussion about credit ratings but because it is a useful paraphrase of the relative health of any political economy.
Fiscal deficits and debt
