#83: The Silent Hero Of The Australian Economy – Ian Macfarlane

Show notes

Selected links

• Follow Ian: Website
• Ten Remarkable Australians, by Ian Macfarlane
• The Search For Stability, by Ian Macfarlane
• House of Debt, by Atif Mian and Amir Sufi
• ‘Money, Credit, and the Demand for Debt’, 1989 RBA bulletin paper by Ian Macfarlane
• ‘Statement on Monetary Policy — November 2019‘, Reserve Bank of Australia
• ‘Inflation and Changing Public Attitudes’, 1995 speech by Ian Macfarlane
• ‘Is There A Bubble In The Housing Market?’, 2004 paper by Karl Case and Robert Shiller
• Chapter 12, Keynes’ General Theory
• ‘Property falls short on price growth’, article from The Australian
• ‘Monetary Policy, Bubbles, and the Knowledge Problem’, paper by Adam Posen
• The Black Swan, by Nassim Taleb
• ‘Missteps to Mayhem’, 2011 Vanderbilt lecture by Michael Burry
• The Land Boomers, by Michael Cannon
• The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne, by Graeme Davison

Topics discussed

• Why did Ian write Ten Remarkable Australians? 5:26
• The state of Australian biography. 9:49
• Harry Hawker, the young aeronautical genius. 11:16
• George “Peking” Morrison, the well-connected adventurer. 13:56
• Frederick Septimus Kelly, the concert pianist who rubbed shoulders with prime ministers and died on the Somme. 17:21
• Why does only one woman feature in Ian’s book? 21:59
• How does Ian view his role as a historian/biographer? 23:39
• Why did Ian study economics? 25:38
• When the RBA rejected its future Governor. 27:10
• When Ian got FOMO. 28:14
• The boom and bust of the 1980s. 30:02
• Whose fault was “the recession we had to have”? 34:51
• Are bubbles caused by credit supply shocks or crazy beliefs? 37:07
• The stud budgie bubble. 39:41
• What did Ian learn from the 1980s booms and bust? 40:40
• The mechanics of central banking. 44:54
• The RBA’s objectives. 51:11
• Should the current RBA use the wealth effect as a channel for monetary policy? 51:56
• The intergenerational implications of housing booms. 55:00
• The early-2000s housing bubble. 57:08
• Defining “bubble”. 58:11
• Ian’s fateful decision to begin “leaning against the wind” in 2002. 1:04:21
• When Ian sent junior RBA staff to attend property spruiker seminars. 1:08:06
• Can you actually make much money betting on property price growth? 1:10:51
• Did Ian prevent an out-of-control housing bubble? 1:13:43
• Should central banks “lean against the wind”? 1:14:37
• The poignant truth of public policy and silent heroes. 1:16:30
• Did Ian see the global financial crisis coming? 1:20:24
• Was the 2012-2017 run-up in house prices as bubbly as the early-2000s run-up? 1:23:05
• How America’s teaser rate loans got “lost in translation” and overlooked by the Aussie regulators. 1:24:59
• Does Ian see risks in today’s housing market? 1:28:58
• The Melbourne land bubble of the 1880s. 1:30:54
• Did the biographical subjects of Ten Remarkable Australians, all born in the late nineteenth century, view themselves as “Australian”? 1:33:13