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Showing posts from March, 2015

The cost of investing in virtue and punishing sin

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The Vice Fund invests in businesses that are considered by many to be socially irresponsible. Recently renamed the Barrier Fund, it has assets of USD 290 million invested in “industries with significant barriers to entry, including tobacco, alcoholic beverage, gaming and defense/ aerospace industries.” The Social Index Fund tracks an index screened by social, human rights, and environmental criteria. Constituents have superiorenvironmental policies, strong hiring/promotion records for minorities and women, and a safe workplace. There are no companies involved in tobacco, alcohol, adult entertainment, firearms, gambling, nuclear power, and unfair labor practices. It has assets under managementof USD 1.5 billion … A different study comparing “sin stocks” to market returns for a variety of countries from 1970 to 2007. In most countries, sin stocks comfortably beat the market. The “sin” industries in this study included alcohol, tobacco, “adult services,” weapons, and gambling. In

Dementia and the coherence of self

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  The disremembered  – Dementia undermines all of our philosophical assumptions about the coherence of the self. But that might be a good thing Senate to launch broad inquiry into wine industry  – South Australian Senator Anne Ruston, who lives in the state’s Riverland wine region, moved for the inquiry to investigate whether there was market failure in the industry and whether government policies could help the industry become more profitable. Mortgaging the Future?  – In the six decades following World War II, bank lending measured as a ratio to GDP has quadrupled in advanced economies. To a great extent, this unprecedented expansion of credit was driven by a dramatic growth in mortgage loans. Lending backed by real estate has allowed households to leverage up and has changed the traditional business of banking in fundamental ways. This “Great Mortgaging” has had a profound influence on the dynamics of business cycles. Xi Jinping’s challenge is to be strong enough to loosen contr

The Newspoll influence

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I am not sure why it is but Newspoll is the pollster that has the most influence in Canberra. Perhaps it’s because of the regularity of appearing every second Tuesday.  Perhaps it’s because of being published in the nation’s only remaining broadsheet. Whatever. It is so. So Tony Abbott will leave the Parliament hothouse this week with his position secure. But overall the  opinion polls as a whole show his government is still in serious trouble.

Cash from Australia sending Indonesians to fight with IS

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This morning’s  Jakarta Post  reports : Another  Post  story reports claims by an Indonesian official that Australia has sent back 15 illegal immigrants from Nepal, Iran and Bangladesh into Indonesian waters off West Java’s Sukabumi. The illegal immigrants had reached Australia’s Christmas Island and stayed there for three days, an official of the Sukabumi Immigration office, Markus Lenggo, quoted the immigrants as saying. “They said they crossed to the Australian island from the Pamengpeuk coastal village of Garut [in West Java] on March 17, but after three days they were sent back to Indonesian territory,” Markus said. The 15 illegal immigrants — six from Iran including three girls, seven from Bangladesh and two from Nepal – were found stranded on the coast of Pangumbahan in Sukabumi by the police on Sunday. They were then sent to the Sukabumi Immigration Office, which put them in its detention center, he said. Nine of them were in possession of official documents fro

Give us all a pill – making people more sensitive to inequality

Altering brain chemistry makes us more sensitive to inequality  = What if there were a pill that made you more compassionate and more likely to give spare change to someone less fortunate? UC Berkeley scientists have taken a big step in that direction. A new study by UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco researchers finds that giving a drug that changes the neurochemical balance in the prefrontal cortex of the brain causes a greater willingness to engage in prosocial behaviors, such as ensuring that resources are divided more equally. An exceptional autumn hot spell in northern and central Australia  – Many records were set during this hot spell. The Northern Territory and Queensland had their hottest March days on record in area-averaged terms, whilst the event also included the highest temperature ever observed in Australia in the second half of March. Why Greek default looms The new authoritarianism  – In recent decades, new forms of dictatorship based on manipulating information rat

Another day and another probe into another bank

Hardline New York regulator Lawsky targets Deutsche Bank over Libor – FT.com . Benjamin Lawsky, the New York regulator known for taking a hard line against overseas banks, has shouldered his way into the long-running Libor scandal, investigating  Deutsche Bank  for alleged manipulation of the benchmark borrowing rate, according to people familiar with the matter. The probe by New York’s  Department of Financial Services  adds to a litany of US regulatory problems for Germany’s largest lender.

Labor gains in Morgan Poll

Arctic sea ice extent hits record low for winter

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Click to enlarge Sea ice in the Arctic Ocean has fallen to the lowest recorded level for the winter season, according to US scientists.The maximum this year was 14.5 million sq km, said the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado in Boulder. This is the lowest since 1979, when satellite records began. A recent study found that Arctic sea ice had thinned by 65% between 1975 and 2012. Bob Ward of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics said: “The gradual disappearance of ice is having profound consequences for people, animals and plants in the polar regions, as well as around the world, through sea level rise.” The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) said the maximum level of sea ice for winter was reached this year on 25 February and the ice was now beginning to melt as the Arctic moved into spring. via  BBC News – Arctic sea ice extent hits record low for winter .

Warming world trend continues

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NASA: Earth Tops Hottest 12 Months On Record Again, Thanks To Warm February  – NASA reported this weekend that last month was the second-hottest February on record, which now makes March 2014–February 2015 the hottest 12 months on record. This is using a 12-month moving average, so we can “see the march of temperature change over time,” rather than just once every calendar year. How Many Mutual Funds Routinely Rout the Market? Zero  – The bull market in stocks turned six last Monday, and despite some rocky stretches — like last week, when the market fell — it has generally been a very pleasant time for money managers, who have often posted good numbers. Look more closely at those gaudy returns, however, and you may see something startling. The truth is that very few professional investors have actually managed to outperform the rising market consistently over those years. In fact, based on the updated findings and definitions of a particular study, it appears that no mutual fund ma

Advice on Greens for Labor from Labour

The Australian Labor Party has struggled in recent federal and state elections to work out how it should treat the threat of Greens candidates snatching their votes in previously safe inner city seats. A vote for a Green risks giving the Liberals extra seats has become a familiar Labor cry without there being much evidence to support such a claim with the electoral system’s preferential voting. An end result of such misguided thinking is for Labor to play preference games in voting for upper houses where a seeming desire to punish Greens for their inner city naughtiness has led to some real opponents of a conservative bent being elected. This phenomenon of a traditional left of centre party having trouble dealing with another leftist party is not uniquely Australian. European socialists have been dealing with it for 20 years with an acceptance of coalition governments making it relatively peaceful. Not so in Britain where the Australian born leader of the Green Party of England and

Cardinal George Pell carries out sweeping reforms

Pope Frances’s Financial Reforms Rattle Vatican’s Old Guard  – Pope Francis has made significant progress in bringing transparency to the Vatican’s finances. Cardinal George Pell is carrying out sweeping reforms. To fix inequality, Democrats are pushing unions  – At a time when GOP is gaining ground in very public attacks on labor, the left is coming to the defense of collective bargaining. … In recent months, a collection of left-leaning politicians, economists, and public intellectuals have started making a renewed case for collective bargaining as a tool to heal the ailing middle class. The pitch doubles as an effort for Democrats to preserve a key constituency they’ve long relied on to win elections, at a time when conservatives are making strong gains in often very public attacks on union power. The Next Internet Is TV  – Websites are unnecessary vestiges of a time before there were better ways to find things to look at on your computer or your phone. The Biology of Being Good

Turnbull and the Keating influence

The more I see, hear and read of Malcolm Turnbull these days, the more inclined I am to believe my informant that the would-be Prime Minister is getting some tactical advice from former Prime Minister Paul Keating. See my political snippet from back in February  The new besties – Malcolm Turnbull and Paul Keating  where I mentioned that what I’ll call “a normally reliable and well informed Sydney friend” assured me that the pair have developed a close friendship. They are regularly, I was told, in each others company as the Liberal leadership pretender gets a tip or two on playing politics from the former Labor master. For further evidence, take these comments as recorded by Simon Benson in a thoughtful  Daily Telegraph  column this morning: “Labor had committed to several high-profile promises that if delivered would vastly increase outlays over the next decade, with much of their cost conveniently hidden beyond the budget’s four-year forward estimates window. “Kevin Rudd’s 20

Has Tony Abbott committed Australia to a never ending war?

A couple of stories this week that make me wonder what Tony Abbott has got us into by sending our troops back to Iraq to tackle the ISIS threat. One is on the Foreign Policy website –  Let Me Make This as Unclear as Possible . It makes the case for “why the Obama administration’s authorization for the use of military force against the Islamic State is intentionally an open-ended ticket to forever war … again.” The author, Micah Zenko, who is the Douglas Dillon fellow with the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations, looks at recent congressional hearings on an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) that the Obama administration sought even while claiming a president did not need such a thing. Two bits of evidence stood out: In a telling exchange last week, [Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Christine] Wormuth was asked by Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) how she would define victory against the Islamic State. Wormuthdeclared: “When ISIL is no

Another remarkable Telegraph column – Do as I say not as I do

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A wonderful addition from this morning’s Sydney’s  Daily Telegraph  to my “ Journalists talking about each other ” section. The regular Tuesday purveyor of the paper’s vitriol column – Sarrah Le Marquand – has reached heights of which her peers Piers Akerman, Miranda Devine and Andrew Bolt surely would be proud. Ms Le Marquand spent a couple of hundred words putting the boot into Mark Latham for his “I hate-youse*-all bile dressed up as an opinion column” that appears in the  Australian Financial Review. Nothing wrong with that. If you hand it out like Latham you must expect to get it back, and as the Le Marquand writes, that “is the very result he so craves.” Rather it is the “do as I say rather than what I do” hypocrisy that follows that puts this column onto the Tele’s top shelf. Latham has proven beyond a doubt he has nothing of substance or merit to impart. His columns are little more than the attention-seeking tantrums of a self-entitled toddler, so why waste time and

Changing views on drug smugglers by the Sydney Daily Telegraph

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Contrasting front pages – then and now. (Click to enlarge) My thanks to James Carleton for drawing this change in attitude to my attention.

Spanking kids still overwhelmingly acceptable

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Millennials like to spank their kids just as much as their parents did The new nuclear age  – A quarter of a century after the end of the cold war, the world faces a growing threat of nuclear conflict Russia after the Nemtsov murder  – Boris Nemtsov’s murder may be a turning point in current Russian history. Unfortunately, it is almost surely not a turn to the better, but one to something bad or to something even worse. This point needs to be made clear from the beginning. It is an illusion to think that this event will lead to anything positive, such as a backlash in the population at large against nationalistic rhetoric or even some kind of liberal revolution, or “Russian Spring. Google wants to rank websites based on facts not links How you’ve been ‘tricked’ by targeted painkillers Why America fell out of love with golf

China’s slower growth rate – Australia to feel the pain

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China Warms Up to ‘Low’ Growth Rate Other Countries Would Kill for  – Today, China’s leaders are increasingly aware that what really matters is ensuring adequate employment and growing incomes. That’s particularly true of Li, premier since March 2013, who has a law degree and a Ph.D. in economics from Peking University and who is known as an advocate for more economic reform. The leadership can even afford to miss its GDP target, as arguably it did last year, when the goal was “about 7.5 percent,” as long as Chinese are employed and keep earning more. It’s been working. Last year, Li promised that China would add 10 million urban jobs and then handily beat the target, with 13 million. People’s livelihoods improved, too. … Expect the real pain to be reserved for resource-rich countries such as Australia and Russia. The value of crude oil, steel, and iron ore imports to China is already falling rapidly, a trend likely to continue as China’s property sector and new construction cools

Tony Abbott the flag man

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Surge in poles: Tony Abbott’s flag count hits a new high  – The PM’s latest speech at Parliament House was backed by no fewer than eight Australian flags, marking a steady rise in recent months Cash Today  – Student loans are in principle a straightforward business. The government lends students money; after they graduate, they begin repaying it. From the perspective of politicians and the Treasury the advantage of loans over grants is clear: the money isn’t simply given away, it comes back over the lifetime of the loan. Even better, in the national accounts the loans are classified as ‘financial transactions’, not ‘expenditure’, and are excluded from calculations of the deficit.​ Saudi Award Goes to Muslim Televangelist Who Harshly Criticizes U.S.  – He has publicly declared that “the Jews” control America, that apostates can be killed, that the United States is the world’s “biggest terrorist” and that the Sept. 11 attacks were an “inside job” by President George W. Bush. But las

Some thoughts on lobbying and other interesting reads for today

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A Lobbyist Just for You  – And two other solutions to counter corporate influence in Washington. Has the global economy slowed down?  – Big macroeconomic changes happen slowly, sometimes they aren’t clearly visible until years later. We may currently be living through a structural change in the global economy as big as any since World War II without fully realising it. The world economy may be becoming less integrated, with one of the important drivers of globalisation swinging into reverse. This week the Dutch Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis released its latest estimates of world trade. This widely-followed measure showed that world trade grew by 3.3% in 2014, that’s up from 2.7% in 2013 and 2.1% in 2012 but still well below the long term average of growth of 5%. What would happen if an 800-kiloton nuclear warhead detonated above midtown Manhattan? The war at home: how Russia is winning the battle for hearts and minds  – Recent attention on the Kremlin has focussed on it

Toss a coin on Australian interest rate decision

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The Owl’s market election indicator cannot pick which way the Reserve Bank board members will vote this afternoon on official interest rates. And my opinion? I am as confused as the rest of the punters.

Explaining electoral gerrymanders

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This is the best explanation of gerrymandering you will ever see  – Gerrymandering — drawing political boundaries to give your party a numeric advantage over an opposing party — is a difficult process to explain. If you find the notion confusing, check out the chart above — adapted from one posted to Reddit this weekend — and wonder no more. Protecting Fragile Retirement Nest Eggs  - A new study by the White House Council of Economic Advisers has found that financial advisers seeking higher fees and commissions drain $17 billion a year from retirement accounts by steering savers into high-cost products and strategies rather than comparable lower-cost ones. The report has rocked the financial services industry — not because it is news but because the industry sees it, correctly, as a forceful statement of the Obama administration’s determination to do something about the problem. Australia’s top 20 greenhouse gas emitters Food Waste Grows With the Middle Class That ugly fruit and

Harassment of Jews worldwide reaches a seven-year high

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Latest Trends in Religious Restrictions and Hostilities  – Worldwide, social hostilities involving religion declined somewhat in 2013 after reaching a six-year peak the previous year, but roughly a quarter of the world’s countries are still grappling with high levels of religious hostilities within their borders, according to the Pew Research Center’s latest annual study on global restrictions on religion.The new study finds that the share of countries with high or very high levels of social hostilities involving religiondropped from 33% in 2012 to 27% in 2013, the most recent year for which data are available. These types of hostilities run the gamut from vandalism of religious property and desecration of sacred texts to violent assaults resulting in deaths and injuries.By contrast, the share of countries with high or very highgovernment restrictions on religion stayed roughly the same from 2012 to 2013. The share of countries in this category was 27% in 2013, compared with 29% in