If you are going to write about a subject then it isn't advisable to criticise people or organisations for something you do a lot of the time.
Gerard Henderson, last Tuesday, had a dig at the ABC. He claimed they couldn't admit when they are wrong.
If one reads this and this then you might think Gerard has a problem as well.
He reviewed this paper by Joshua Gans and Andrew Leigh on media bias. He tried to be cute by being smart about some of Gans research except he got the wrong person.( read this for example) He never could admit that.
He didn't like the paper either. Too many numbers
Henry Ergas criticised Peter Martin's article in Fairfax about the IMF paper on Fiscal profligacy.
He rightly says it examines public debt but they also look at public spending as well which Peter Martin reported. He claims there were a number of wasteful areas of public expenditure during 2008 but provides no proof.
He then accurately says the IMF paper didn't look at the quality of spending. A strange thing to say after claiming wasteful spending occurred in 2008. In fact quite contradictory.
I do remember Ergas claiming NZ had a faster fiscal consolidation program than Australia even given the Christchurch disaster. I thought that strange so I looked at the IMF reports on both countries and then any updated fiscal positions from both Country's treasury departments.
Guess what? Australia had a much faster fiscal consolidation program than NZ.
We see in both cases the pot calling the kettle black!
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