News
Archived news for February 2009 | Recent news
Investment key to free trade
Martin Feil's criticism of the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement (Trade millstone around Australia's neck, 10/02) ignores its real gains. Feil...
Tinseltown ideology reflects our cultural obsessions
It's no surprise that when Hollywood decided to remake the 1951 sci-fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still for modern audiences, the theme would...
I was wrong on the surge in Iraq
Whether it was worth doing remains highly doubtful, and how it will end remains to be seen. But it looks as if the US is achieving some kind of...
Rudd's plan a dead weight on the future
On Monday, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told a news conference the government would "move heaven and earth" to support the economy. That's a tall...
Slaves to Keynes saddle us with debt
Economist John Maynard Keynes once famously said practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are...
The case against hand-outs; The rescue plan
In Australia's great Keynesian giveaway debate, much pontificating turns on whether it is better to provide hand-outs or tax cuts. Though tax cuts...
Rudd's rush is unseemly
In the past few days we've learnt that Kevin Rudd doesn't much like what he calls ‘‘free-market fundamentalism''. It seems, though,...
Rudd throws out the baby
One of the enduring questions about Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, and his philosophical position on economics, is now being answered. As little as six...
Very little gain, lots of long-term pain
Australia's second pump-priming stimulus announced yesterday will prove every bit as wasteful as last October's $10.4 billion package. Predictably,...
The fall of a civilisation, or just a
About a year after his devastating 1996 election defeat, Paul Keating remarked: ‘Over the course of a long political career, you get accused...