Fake News: Reserve Bank Did NOT Say Living Standards Won't Improve Until All The Baby Boomers Are Dead

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk
Fake News: Reserve Bank Did NOT Say Living Standards Won't Improve Until All The Baby Boomers Are Dead

No, the Governor of the Australian Reserve Bank did not really say living standards won't improve untill all the baby boomers are dead because they are the ones hoarding all the money. Philip Lowe never said those things, reports that he did are not true and originate from a satire website.

The Betoota Advocate published an article on March 22, 2018 titled "Living Standards Won't Improve Until All The Baby Boomers Are Dead" Says Reserve Bank (archived here) which opened:

A controversial comment from the Reserve Bank today has a lot of hard-working senior Australians up in arms over claims the nation would be better off if they all just died.

Philip Lowe, Governor of the Reserve Bank Of Australia, made the comments this afternoon during a presentation to shareholders and investors in Sydney.

"Young people want fast internet, higher wages, affordable housing and some tangible career prospects. Unreasonable, I know," he said.

Some users on social media who only saw the summary presumably thought it was real enough to share, or maybe they saw the humor:

"Living Standards Won't Improve Until All The Baby Boomers Are Dead" Says Reserve Bank

"Young people want fast internet, higher wages, affordable housing and some tangible career prospects. Unreasonable, I know," he said.

But The Betoota Advocate is a satirical website (even though it does not come with an explicit satire disclaimer). In December 2017 The New York Times ran a feature about the founders:

The Betoota Advocate, a Fake News Site Australians Really Love

For three years Mr. Overell and Mr. Parker have remained steadfastly in character as proprietors of a rural newspaper. Often compared to the satirical news site The Onion, The Betoota Advocate has become the sardonic voice of disenchanted millennial Australians.

So you should really not believe anything the site says without checking it first...

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  Maarten Schenk

Lead Stories co-founder Maarten Schenk is our resident expert on fake news and hoax websites. He likes to go beyond just debunking trending fake news stories and is endlessly fascinated by the dazzling variety of psychological and technical tricks used by the people and networks who intentionally spread made-up things on the internet.  He can often be found at conferences and events about fake news, disinformation and fact checking when he is not in his office in Belgium monitoring and tracking the latest fake article to go viral.

Read more about or contact Maarten Schenk

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