I am taking the easy way out today. I have a number of meetings today and also several deadlines coming up for work that I am doing. As a result, I decided to re-cycle some work I did on Friday (early), which was written for the Fairfax press daily newspaper – The Age – as a commissioned Op Ed contribution. Friday was ridiculous when I think back – I had to squeeze more than Archimedes would recommend if I was dealing with liquid into the time available. So today, what comes around goes around – to my favour. The Op Ed was 800 odd words on a complex topic so today, by way of reference, I thought I would add a few sentences to the 800 words to provide more explanation of the points. The background was that a few high profile firms announced fairly large job cuts last week in Australia which lead to a stream of media headlines and calls for government assistance, both short-run in the form of cash bailouts and longer-term, more protection (tariffs etc). The macroeconomics of the situation, however, has not been seized upon by the media, which goes to the heart of the problem. The debate tends to focus on aspects of an issue, which are less important, and, ironically, in this case, are changes which are largely beneficial (structural change), but, ignoring the issues which cause the most damage (those relating to output gaps).