Columnist Michael Pascoe

Never mind finance for a minute, let's pose a philosophical question in light of Wayne Swan's first budget: Who's rich? Picking your way through the Budget rhetoric and political spin, you might think the official Canberra view is that a

It's a big night for Wayne Swan - a night that will signal the start of a significant political career or the end of it. The bad news is that the early omens aren't good. While Kevin Rudd has made an amazing start to his Prime Ministership,

When you throw rocks for a living, you expect to have some thrown back at you. What's less common is to have a rock gently returned in thoughtful padding with helpful instructions on how to improve your aim. That is what happened after a column

One of the great apparent conundrums of Australia at present is our housing market - it seems we're not building enough to put rooves over the heads of everyone coming here despite high prices, as demonstrated by the housing affordability measure

Today's Consumer Price Index and ANZ's interim result were not good news. Indeed, annual inflation running at 4.25 per cent on the Reserve Bank's preferred measure ( http://au.biz.yahoo.com/080423/19/1pktq.html ) and the ANZ's real