Pascoe mafia labels Satyajit Das “doomsayer” in record time

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From card-carrying bubble-boy and Pascoe ally, Bernard Keane, at Crikey

In a piece in the Financial Review today with the sinister title “Australia’s luck is running out”, Das — a former banker turned author and commentator, manages to combine that staple of Fairfax, the property bubble/We’re All Rooned piece with a broader critique of the Australian economy. Das says we rely too much on mining, we have a huge property bubble, too much debt, we pay ourselves too much and our productivity growth is too low, we depend too much on foreign capital.

Rather than pointing out evidence about wages growth, productivity and our superannuation pool that contradicts Das’ economic critique, or noting the strange job snobbery that regards mining and construction as an inferior source of growth, it’s more exciting to move onto his moral critique. Australia, you see, are a bunch of racists and busybodies.

…Why would Das be so angry about Australia’s growth? It wouldn’t have something to do with the fact that our economy, along with the rest of the world, has stubbornly refused to follow his predictions, would it? After all, Das is, in the words of one economic commentator in 2015, “one of the gloomiest financial commentators I know… [who] has succeeded at taking his economic pessimism to a new level.” Das, to be found opining at the ABC, or in various online outlets, has regularly warned of another financial crisis that will lead to a depression worse than the 1930s, of falling international growth, of “another great recession”. It must be infuriating for Das that the global economy has been picking up momentum all year and the Australian economy, too, is accelerating and delivering very strong jobs growth.

Das does not critique mining, he notes there is a lack of alternatives. Construction is a dumb way to grow because you have to keep building more every year to grow at all.

Can we see your evidence, Bernard?

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Here it is, wages growth at all-time lows, falling in nominal terms for the first time in recorded history:

Productivity marginally improved but structurally weak:

The superannuation pool is good but it hasn’t stopped us running a current account deficit during the very temporary greatest mining profits boom in history:

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Nor prevented this:

I mean, sure, it’s fun to throw poo like a monkey, Bernard, but at some point you might want to write about the national interest.

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About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.