ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
The happy-go-lucky economist that runs the Reserve Bank of Australia has revealed that he had a daydream recently where naughty Christmas shoppers are beaten with sticks by burly Indian policemen who have a special hatred for people spending frivolously in our over-heating economy.
After years and years of outright begging Australians to live outside their means in some sort of neo-pagan orgy of consumerism and financial autofellatio, RBA Governor Philip Lowe has asked people to do the complete opposite so the economy can cool down and put downward pressure on inflation, which our national bagman Jim Chalmers says is ‘pubic enemy number juan’.
Mr Lowe, in his weekly phone call with The Advocate’s editorial executive, said the daydream he had about shoppers getting the naughty stick is something he says has happened before.
“The first time it happened, I was on the bus to work listening to the Cornfield Chase theme from Interstellar when I saw these shoppers leaving David Jones with armfuls of their iconic shopping bags. I thought, ‘Why do I even put interest rates up when arseholes like that go and drop a week’s pay on Christmas presents?’ and then, gosh, I thought I was hallucinating, I saw a heavy-set Indian policeman hit the Dad so hard on the top of the head with his stick that it broke. The daydream continued. Some yuppie buying gelato on a 19-degree day. I dreamed I saw an Indian policeman hit the guy so forcefully on the arm that it broke,” he said.
“It is my dream, it is my nightmare. A shopper getting flogged with a length of 45mm dowel for buying Uncle Greg some socks for Christmas – and surviving. If we’re going to get through this, we need to stop spending. There needs to be an economic penance for the good times. I know it’s hard for an Australian to understand this but we need to pay the price of repeatedly hitting a flatlining economy with the property market defibrillator again and again,”
“But there’s one thing that transcends recessions and depressions – and that’s love.”
With that pensive remark, Mr Lowe wished us well.
More to come.
