Now that S&P and others have belled the cat on the US debt crisis, one wonders whether Glenn Stevens might apologise to Barnaby Joyce, for not taking his 2009 warnings seriously.
Better yet, perhaps Stevens might care to donate some of his $1.05 Million salary to the man who correctly predicted what he denied.
At the least, he should be forced to explain to the Australian public why any “public servant” deserves a $234,000 pay rise in the middle of a global financial crisis. Such as the one he received, at the very peak of the GFC panic in October 2008 –
A pay increase of A$234,000 ($252,000) at the height of the global financial crisis made Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Glenn Stevens one of the world’s highly-compensated central bankers.
Stevens’s 2010 total compensation was A$1.05 million, with an A$805,000 base salary that was 61 percent more than European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet’s and four times that of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke…
Spokesmen in the Reserve Bank and Treasurer’s office declined to comment … when contacted by Bloomberg News yesterday.
Stevens’ pay increase alone, is far more than Barnaby earns. Even though Stevens was blind to the oncoming GFC, and the US (and European) debt situation. And despite the fact that he has apparently learned nothing from his mistakes in the lead up to the GFC. See here, here, and here.
The real public servant – Barnaby – is right.
UPDATE:
On a per capita basis, RBA Governor Glenn Stevens’ “base” salary alone ($805K) is 54 times bigger than that of the Governor of the US Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke.
Hardly a surprise, when one considers that ‘our’ RBA has been given the power to set their own salaries –
The Remuneration Committee is a committee of the Reserve Bank Board. Its membership is drawn from the non-executive members of the Reserve Bank Board.
Barnaby Is Right 
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