Ross Gittins

Advantages for savers as banks fight for deposits to shore up funds

Ross Gittins Where banks get the money they lend has changed since the GFC.

Up, up and away: great big tax burdens are here to stay

Ross Gittins We have been warned. The furious reaction to Tony Abbott's promise to use a $2.7 billion-a-year levy on big business to pay for improved parental leave makes it a safe bet the most dishonest and...

Why Barnaby Joyce is creating much ado about nothing on foreign debt

Ross Gittins It seems the senator does not really grasp what he is talking about.

Reserve should nip rising house prices in the bud

Ross Gittins I have no idea whether the next rise in the official interest rate will come at the Reserve Bank board's meeting in three weeks or a month later. But if I were governor I wouldn't be dragging my feet.

Think small - and other capital ideas

Ross Gittins I don't know if I'm getting any wiser but, certainly, the older I get the more I conclude that small is beautiful.

No need to hasten spending cuts in growing economy

Ross Gittins After all the stimulus, recovery is starting to look self-sustaining.

Health reform plan has rationalist fingerprints

Ross Gittins Just about everyone associated with healthcare professes to have a soul above money. It's only the best interests of patients they care about - unless they discover their incomes are threatened, of...

Rudd reform plan to treat causes of health pain

Ross Gittins This hospitals plan brings big efficiency gains.

Change of thinking as the IMF adjusts

Ross Gittins The formerly doctrinaire outfit has surprised with its crisis response.

At a time when libertarians should be speaking out, they're strangely silent

Ross Gittins Why pass up the free kick delivered by the insulation debacle?

Come over to the supply side and transform your world

Ross Gittins Rediscovery of the power of market forces has led to rapid growth.

World works better thanks to healthy markets

Ross Gittins Some people think economists' enthusiasm for ''free markets'' is the root cause of the world's present woes.

Asia masks the harsh reality of developed countries' anaemic performance

Ross Gittins There is more to world GDP figures than meets the eye.

Sights set too low even as world's central bankers accept need for reforms

Ross Gittins Naivety about the infallibility of market forces has gone.

Let's take our hats off to the Reserve Bank

Ross Gittins It is doing a fine job of keeping Australia in sound economic shape.

Mealy-mouthed pollies see voters as a bunch of suckers

Ross Gittins I don't think I've ever met a politician who didn't claim a great belief in the innate good sense of the Australian voter. I guess if I were a pollie I'd say that, too.