Let Peter Costello work his magic at IMF – mounted a case for our former Treasurer (one of the worst this country has ever had) should get the baton and head to Washington. The problem is that Costello left a destructive mess in his wake and is a budget surplus obsessive. What the IMF needs is a budget deficit-biased head.

tooth fairy delivers some sixpences to help ailing family finances – problem is that the children will run out of teeth, unlike the government who can never run out of money.

A lot of readers write to me questioning why I consider economic growth to be important. It is a complex topic and beyond a single blog – especially one that I am writing late this Friday afternoon. The short response is that I am not pro-growth. I am pro-employment and pro maximising human potential. In some circumstances economic growth is a necessary condition to achieve these goals – for example, when material standards of living are very low. In other situations, populations can still prosper with little or no growth. I do not advocate growth at the expense of environmental sustainability. But even with slow growth economies, fiscal policy is an important consideration and governments may have to expand budget deficits as a proportion of GDP to keep their economies from falling further backwards. That is the case in Japan at this present time – a nation that has all but stopped growing over the last twenty years.