Some Observations on Recent Economic Developments

I confess that I had diffi culty in deciding on a topic for tonight’s talk. There were, in my view, no burning issues that I wanted to address, or messages that I wanted to leave my listeners with. In the event, I have decided to talk about three topics: how the world has coped with a tripling of oil prices, how the world is emerging from a period of exceptionally low interest rates, and, quite separately, is there an Australian model of macroeconomic policy?