Down under on your luck

One Bloomberg commentator has recently written,
"Australia's 14-year expansion is more than a China story. It has much to do with sound monetary and fiscal policies from which the world, including the U.S., could learn. The world could learn from how Australia has managed its economy in the past decade and a half."

He is almost too kind. In fact, he overlooked that Australia is the "Lucky Country", and this time I don't mean it in the cynically ironic way Donald Horne originally penned.

Australia was lucky to avoid the tech boom. It simply had no tech, so had no boom and had no consequent bust of any consequence. (See chart at this post.)

Following on the Asian monetary crash and the tech crash, Australia had the 2000 Olympics, which was a building boom on Olympic proportion and that, coupled with the fantastic games tourism results, put a floor under any negative global economic impact until about the time China began to rise from obscurity and buy anything Australia could dig out of the ground.

Howard was lucky to have the Labor Party implode under the weight of Beazely and the wag of Latham.

There is no denying that Howard and Costello contributed to a sounder economic climate in Australia; but they were as much the beneficiaries of the times as the rest of us.