New RBA board member John Edwards has documented his economic views extensively. In 2006, his best-known economics work, The Quiet Boom, written for the Lowy Institute, was among the first to observe that global economic trends had turned comprehensively in Australia's favour. It dismissed "the vocal opponents of 'economic rationalism'," and saw Australians as having a new-found economic confidence.But Edwards also noted that Australia's productivity growth was slowing, and suggested that gains from further market-oriented reforms would be "marginal", and that education, innovation and exporting were now more important if Australia was prosper. This thesis was extensively adopted by the Labor Opposition in the lead-up to the 2007 election that brought the Rudd government to power.The Quiet Boom also argued that overseas' funding of Australian bank lending represented "a certain vulnerability at the heart of the Australian economic miracle". The size of lending for housing meant a house price crash would reduce Australia's ability to finance its current account deficit, he said. The threat from a growing current account deficit has been central to Edwards' analysis of the Australian economy. This view may sit uneasily with the RBA's economic staff.Edwards also wrote of Australia's banks that "while [they] are private businesses, their lenders may regard their debts as having a quasi government guarantee" because of the government's willingness to bail them out. This problem, known as moral hazard, jumped to the fore in the global financial crisis two years after Edwards wrote those words.