For seven years now MB and sons has argued that Australia is trapped in a growth straight-jacket, wedged between the need for fiscal consolidation (to protect its bank’s offshore borrowings) and the compulsion by households to save after the GFC shock:
The double head wind has resulted in sub-standard growth that is obvious to anyone with eyes:
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Not even the largest commodity boom in history was enough to upset this secular trend. Indeed, consider what it would have been without it! But it is not unique to Australia. Indeed, it infects most of the Western world post-GFC, from BofAML on the post-GFC US recovery: