The old saw about economics being a dismal science turns out, on the evidence of this short but interesting piece of work, to be half-right. The field is pretty dismal:

everything that seems good contains the seeds of disaster, which will sprout, if not soon, then eventually. So the resources boom that was an important part of Australia’s decade of economic success, starting in the mid-1990s, was, according to Charlton, a mixed blessing.