THE DISTILLERY: Decline and fall

To understand the decline of newspapers, see the Fairfax mastheads today for one crucial but largely-ignored reason: dreadful business commentary. Across the flagship papers just one commentary makes the grade. The remainder, where it can be found, is vacuous and repetitious. If this column can offer one word of advice to Roger Corbett ahead of his appointment as chairman it would be this: figure out your customer benefit.

The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age offer up Malcolm Maiden as a sacrificial lamb. Maiden states the obvious that Glenn Stevens is a serial convention buster and will raise rates. Looking beyond Business Day for something...anything...of value, Gerard Henderson does some kindergarten arithmetic on the Rudd government's handling of national relations with China. The papers also offer a Paul Krugman column on Obama-bashing that was available free two days ago at The New York Times. And that's all she wrote.

Over at the third leg of the stool, The Australian Financial Review, Chanticleer repeats Maiden's argument, or is it the other way around? The AFR editorial pointlessly warns shareholders not to get too feisty during the forthcoming AGM season. The only Fairfax commentary worth reading today is Glen Mumford in the AFR's Market Wrap who dispenses with recent Australian triumphalism surrounding the G20 by focusing on the emergence of a G4 nucleus within that body – China, Europe, Japan and the US.

Frankly, The Australian smashes the combined efforts of the three Fairfax papers. Rather than state the obvious on interest rates, The Australian's Henry Thornton thinks his way through a new model for judging "true inflation” that "is a weighted average of four series – underlying CPI inflation (the Reserve Bank's current main guide to action), consumer inflationary expectations (in deference to the regular central banker talk of the need to "anchor" such expectations), house price inflation (representing Australia's favourite asset class) and share price inflation (Australia's second-favourite asset class).” Bravo.

Michael Stutchbury explores an argument for the creation of an Australian sovereign wealth fund, much like those used by Norway and Chile to increase savings and smooth commodity cycles. While this column is sceptical of Stutchbury's assumption of a continuing commodities super-cycle, "China 2.0” as he calls it, within this context the idea is excellent and deserves much wider discussion.

Bryan Frith has a useful offering on how recent FIRB decision-making is breaking the Foreign Acquisitions & Takeovers Act (FATA). But so much territory around FIRB decisions remains unexplored. This column is desperate for clarity on why Chinese companies are being singled out. What are the problems associated with behind-closed-doors negotiations for investment? Who are the four board members that seem to be toying with Australia's economic lifeline? Why resource firms? What are the implications for Australia's standing as a free-market nation? How do FIRB decisions fit a broad framework of commodity policies, including monopoly mergers between Australian mega-miners? What is China doing about it? Why is the Australian government so opaque on this issue? And on it goes.

Business editor, Andrew Main, explores how the Irish economy has collapsed after the bust of its property bubble. This is a worthwhile topic for Australians, who are caught in the world's last great housing blow-off, but the piece fails to deliver on its promise, with no detail on how Irish banks, foreign debt, regulatory structures and housing dynamics differ from here.

John Durie follows up Adele Ferguson's scoop on Brambles' reshuffle from yesterday with more analysis.

Only spoiling today's strong performance at The Australian, is an op-ed piece by the head of McKinsey & Co Australia. Ostensibly about finding government efficiency, the article is so full of management clap-trap it reads like an advertorial. Looks rather like the McKinsey PR team scored a direct hit with their flak.