HOUSE OVERSIGHT 029562 "Well, frankly, the US didn't have the wisdom. It just wanted to celebrate its peace dividend. The two Clinton terms and the two George W. Bush terms, that's four presidential terms, have cost US mightily." For Keating, the malaise in US politics is the problem. He says: "The most compelling thing I've seen in years is that in the great burst of American productivity between 1990 and 2008, of that massive increment to national income, none of it went to wages. By contrast, in Australia real wages over the same period had risen by 30 per cent." Keating sees this "as the breakdown of America's national compact", the shattering of its prosperity deal. He says American conservatives abandoned the middle ground represented by Republican presidents such as Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and Bush Sr and became radicals. The derailment, he argues, began under Ronald Reagan and reached its zenith under George W. Bush. With the goodwill gone the US "is not able to produce a medium-term credible fiscal trajectory or get agreement on rebuilding its infrastructure". This paralysis "is significant not just for the US but for the world." Keating links the collapse of this "prosperity compact" to the financial crisis. Too many Americans were unable to sustain themselves from wages and salaries. How did they get by? They used the easy credit of the banking system, thereby feeding the frenzy that ended in bad loans and meltdown. Keating's book has an abiding message for Australia: in the transformed world we "will find ourselves increasingly on our own" having to master our own destiny. The job is to rediscover the productivity and savings agenda of the 1990s. Why did Australia survive the 2008 financial crisis? "Because of the flexibility of the economy," Keating says. "Flexibility which came from the reform of Australia's financial, product and labour markets that began 25 years ago. This has given us one of the most flexible economi