Last week’s national accounts release for the March quarter confirmed that Australia’s FIRE economy – Finance, Insurance and Rental, Hiring & Real Estate Services – continues to party hard, maintaining its record high (11.8%) share of the Australian economy (see next chart).
Since financial markets were first deregulated in the mid-1980s, the FIRE sector has grown at nearly twice the pace of the rest of the economy, sucking the life out of the productive sector:
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