The Age, April 3, 2009

Society needs minders, finders and grinders.

ABOUT 20 years ago I decided to merge my industry policy and trade consultancy business with Deloitte. After a few years we moved to Ernst & Young. This was an educational time for someone who had been used to owning and operating a boutique business without a couple of hundred partners and a few thousand staff.

The Age, March 11, 2009

THE US unemployment level has rocketed to more than 8 per cent of the workforce. It is expected to reach double digits very soon. We are experiencing a similar devastating loss of jobs.

It will be interesting to see if the Government provides any industry breakdown of the job losses. I have said previously (and often) that much of the employment growth and the full employment Australia supposedly had was a simple con trick of defining employment as working an hour a week and ignoring the unemployed who had stopped looking for work.

The Age, February 10, 2009

PRESIDENT Barack Obama has promised to review the North American Free Trade Agreement (the agreement between the US, Canada and Mexico). He wants to be sure that any bilateral trade agreements are in America’s interest.

It is gratifying to read that some academics and politicians have recently discovered that economic theories and policies must, ultimately, be tested against factual outcomes. A pragmatic opportunity to follow this new approach is created by the passage of four years since the introduction of the US Australia Free Trade Agreement. “Buy America” legislation is already before the US Congress to protect the country’s steel industry. This is likely to extend to other major manufactured goods.