Credit Code Red: How Financial Deregulation and World Instability are Exposing Australia to Economic Catastrophe

by Peter Brain, Ian Manning

Australia has been the lucky country for a long time. First it rode off the sheep’s back. Then it became a quarry for emerging economies. It deregulated its financial sector, abandoned manufacturing, rode an apparently endless urban-land boom, and has gone more than 25 years without a recession. But is Australia’s luck about to run out?

Brain and Manning, two of the country’s highly experienced economic analysts, argue that Australia’s prosperity has been bought by borrowing from its future — specifically, by borrowing too much, for the wrong assets, and from the wrong lenders. Using international and local indicators to measure economic danger signs, they warn that, if current policies are not altered, the country will be at extreme risk of an economic calamity. Due to Australia’s high and increasing levels of household debt, foreign debt, and low foreign-exchange reserves, the country will enter what they call a Code Red zone. Once that happens, it is highly unlikely that Australia will be able to avoid, at best, a severe and prolonged recession, or, at worst, an economic catastrophe.

Credit Code Red proposes alternative courses of action for the authorities to take, which involve reducing disposable incomes and imports, re-regulating the financial sector, and abandoning neo-liberal economic theory. It is a timely warning that what is politically unrealistic today may soon become too little, too late.

Genres: Economics

224 pages, Paperback

Published July 17, 2017

About the author

The Right Reverend Dr. Peter Brain is the current bishop of Armidale in the Anglican Church of Australia.

Brain studied at Moore Theological College, and was formerly rector of Wanneroo parish in Western Australia. There he gained a reputation for encouraging his fellow-clergy. He has been bishop of the diocese since 2000.

The Armidale Diocese has the reputation of having the highest proportion of evangelical clergy of any Anglican diocese in the world (even higher, proportionally, than Sydney Diocese, which may be the largest Evangelical Diocese in terms of total population).

Brain obtained a Doctor of Ministry from Fuller Theological Seminary, and his doctoral work led him to write Going the Distance: How to Stay Fit for a Lifetime of Ministry, which achieved a "highly commended" in the 2004 Australian Christian Book of the Year awards.

Brain is married with four children.

Reviews

[Harvey · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a no nonsense analysis of the state of the Australian economy, based, in part, on the analysis of a set of economic indicators defined by the European commission, and applied to the Australian case.

According to the authors, financial deregulation, which started in 1980, is to blame for most problems we see today. We are now close to the point when SHTF. The authors even give a date when this system can no longer inflate, and so, when an economic catastrophe ensues.

It's a very good read. However, it can feel too technical at times.

[Scribe Publications]

A timely and important alert to the accumulating consequences of the economic policies of governments of both persuasions over the last several decades … Batten down the hatches!
John Hewson, Former Leader of the Liberal Party and the Federal Opposition

A terrific book that provides the big-picture economic alternative we have been searching for.
Brian Howe, Former Deputy Prime Minister