Tighter times “coming:” economist

One of the nation’s  most celebrated economists is predicting that Australians will soon have to tighten their belts.

“There are hard times ahead,” Professor Ross Garnaut warns bluntly, in his new book, The Great Crash of 2008.

“Sustainable full employment will require reduction of average incomes and living standards…”

By how much?

“…to levels below those to which Australians became accustomed before the crash,” Garnaut replies.

And he says we simply aren’t ready for what is coming.

“The Australian Government, community and business leadership has barely begun to contemplate the adjustment that is required,” he says.

“There is a danger that the lack of awareness of the hard realities will lead to poor management of the difficult days of economic policy,” Professor Garnaut warns.

He expects all this to occur, in the global shakeout that will follow the global economic crisis.

Talk about economics being “the dismal science.”

We shouldn’t despair, though.  After all, it was a prominent American economist who said that economic forecasting had been invented only “to make Astrology look good.