The author has been described by News Ltd as an "iconoclast", "Svengali", a pollie's "economist muse", and "pungently accurate". Fairfax says he is a "Renaissance man" and "one of Australia’s most respected analysts." Stephen Koukoulas concludes that he is "85% right", and "would make a great Opposition leader." Terry McCrann claims the author thinks "‘nuance’ is a trendy village in the south of France", but can be "scintillating" when he thinks "clearly". The ACTU reckons he’s "an enigma wrapped in a Bloomberg terminal, wrapped in some apparently well-honed abs."

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

A market economist's analysis of defence spending under Liberal and Labor

A very good post over at Ricardian Ambivalence here. The one thing I know with certainty: we don't need home-made, non-nuclear subs; we do need more philanthropy for the SASR and 4RAR (or whatever cmdo regiment they are called now). Actually, my mate RA has had a blog puke, posting like a nutter on his favourite economic memes. He straw-mans me on the jobs data though: the UE rate was never revised, but the influential "zero jobs growth in 2011" argument bandied around by every dove under the sun was totally wrong...

at 8:34 PM