What do New Year’s resolutions, personal trainers, diet pills and interest rates have to do with one another? More than you might think.

Australia, in particular, and the United States, to a lesser degree, dealt with the 2008 financial crisis very effectively. Our combination of aggressive fiscal stimulus, immortalised in Ken Henry’s aphorism “go hard, go early, and go households”, combined with the Reserve Bank shoring up the banking system and slashing short-term interest rates even helped us avoid a recession.