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Showing posts from December, 2013

Thai reform plans but protesters still threaten poll - News and views for Thursday 26 December

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News and views noted along the way. Thai PM unveils reform plan but protesters still threaten poll Why Corporations Might Not Mind Moderate Depression China unveils anti-graft plans, focus on protests, reforms Defiant Turkish PM Erdogan in major reshuffle  - "Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced a major cabinet reshuffle after three ministerial resignations over a corruption inquiry... One of those who quit, Environment Minister Erdogan Bayraktar, had urged Mr Erdogan to step down himself. Police are investigating allegations of illicit money transfers to Iran and bribery for construction projects." The NSA on Trial  - "Ever since Edward Snowden’s revelation that the National Security Agency was collecting and storing data on every phone call every American makes and every text every American sends, the Obama administration has maintained that the program is fully lawful, and that it has been approved repeatedly by all three branches of government. This

Extending life seems ominous- News and views for Wednesday 25 December

News and views noted along the way. The Ukraine-Russia deal  - "The Ukraine-Russia deal involves politics as much as economics. This column argues that the economics of the deal will eventually lead to problems for one or both." When I’m Sixty-Four  - "More seriously, given limited natural resources, already aging populations, spreading megacities, a dearth of jobs in the developed world, severe strains on health services, disappearing pensions and growing inequality, the idea of radically extending life (initially for the rich, one assumes) seems ominous — even if human adaptability and ingenuity are always underestimated."

Bigger governments mean happier people- News and views for Tuesday 24 December

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News and views noted along the way. Do bigger governments lead to happier people? On Jammed Jets, Sardines Turn on One Another Bits and Barbarism  - “From real gold to virtual gold, we’re digging our way back to the 17th century.” Art Dealer to the Führer: Hildebrand Gurlitt’s Deep Nazi Ties  – “Hildebrand Gurlitt, the man who assembled the astounding art collection recently discovered in a Munich apartment, was more deeply involved in the trade of looted artworks than had been previously assumed. He also profited from Nazi injustices after the war.” The global wine drought that never was

Israel’s racism – News and views for Monday 23 December

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News and views noted along the way. The migrants aren’t the problem- Israel’s racism is  – “Israeli public opinion is being shaped by a grotesque Knesset member who has become a joke and a former MK whose party didn’t get enough votes to make it into the legislature. If it weren’t so sad, we’d be laughing until we cried. But now our tears should be over the unbelievable fact that these two marginal characters, these clowns, MK Miri Regev (Likud) and Michael Ben Ari, have, with their hateful incitement, succeeded in dictating the national agenda on the issue of African migrants and asylum seekers. From now on we’ll have to choose: Either you support the refugees, or you support the state (and the longtime residents of south Tel Aviv). Who decided that? Regev and Ben Ari.” Bad Times for Big Brother  – “Preventing terrorist attacks is a critical and complex job. But as the advisory report rightly emphasizes, a free society must have another kind of security as well: the security of

Choosing your barrister and your PR

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The wonderful world of litigation continues to fascinate me so I was intrigued by this reference in London’s  Sunday Telegraph  to some of the sideshow shenanigans surrounding the recent London case of Nigella Lawson, Charles Saatchi and their former servants accused of fraud: There it was in black and white, the role that PR spinners now play in trying to get favourable coverage for their clients in the reporting of court cases. It reminded me of my only sortie into this field many years ago when John Elliott, then of Elders and Fosters brewery fame, was facing some kind of charge or whatever after falling a little from financial grace and I offered, and he accepted, my services to him on a success fee only basis only to find the case quickly thrown out before I had any chance to spin my brilliance. That confirmed my suspicion of the whole judicial system but he did buy me a very fine lunch.

Global warming is the most boring subject on earth – News and views for Sunday 27 December

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News and views noted along the way. Climate Change Is ‘Bo-Ho-Horing’  – “Has the climate change ‘brand’ been ruined? Scientist-turned-filmmaker Randy Olson says that the problem with trying to raise awareness about global warming is that it’s the most boring subject on earth…  It [Al Gore's documentary] made a ton of money which made some people think that suddenly the topic was unboring. Which produced a spate of climate documentaries that were all boring, and eventually resulted in an Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker friend saying to me they all blend together — all the same shots of melting glaciers, polar bears, carbon emissions … blah, blah, blah. By 2008 another friend was at a gathering of indy film distributors in which they were saying, “\’no more environmental documentaries!’, there’s no audience for them. And by 2010 a producer friend of mine said, ‘Even the Green Channel doesn’t want ‘green programming’ ‘.” Missing J. D. Salinger  - “Phantom evidence for the

Not such a silly Joe – Blocking ADM

Archer Daniels Midland’s (ADM), whose takeover of Australia’s Graincorp recently was blocked by Treasurer Joe Hockey, this week agreed to pay $54.3m to resolve civil and criminal charges that a subsidiary bribed government officials in Ukraine in return for tax refunds.  The Financial Times  reports that the deal with US authorities ends an embarrassing chapter for the company, which has sought to polish its image after pleading guilty in a high-profile price-fixing scandal in the 1990s. US authorities accused Alfred C Toepfer International, a Hamburg-based subsidiary, of paying $22m to Ukrainian officials to recover more than $100m in unpaid tax refunds. In one scheme, Toepfer made payments to a shipping company in the port of Odessa for artificially inflated invoices, a piece of which was passed as bribes to Ukrainian officials, the US Securities and Exchange Commission alleged. One set of disbursements was disguised “as prepayments for feed barley”, its complaint said. In anot

Kids learning the truth about Santa – News and views for Saturday 21 December

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News and views noted along the way. Surprising Academic Data on What Happens When Kids Learn the Truth About Santa The Old King is Dead. Long Live the King!  – “It’s time to realize that focusing on the horse race aspect of American presidential politics is precluding actual governance.” Hockey’s massively dishonest budget fiddle  – “It’s only in the full light of day, having had the opportunity to consider the full scale of Treasurer Joe Hockey’s, budget dishonesty that its gravity can be understood. Out of his $68 billion in additional accumulated deficits over the next four years, $54 billion comes from his forecasting fiddle and the rest is spending decisions he’s taken since being elected just over three months ago.” Expected to be China’s biggest, Guangdong carbon mkt begins briskly Chinese local government debt hits new hig h – “Local governments in China have taken on more new debt in 2013 than ever before as they use shadowy bonds to splurge on infrastructure projects

Bankers - they cheat us here, they cheat us there

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Headlines from around the world this morning suggest that banks cheat us everywhere. From Australia's Fairfax papers: And on the other side the of the world comes this report from the European edition of  The Wall Street Journal: Clipping the ticket of ordinary people's savings appears to have no limit for the money managers. And now, it seems, the Australian Coalition government is intent on aiding and abetting the robbery. The Assistant Treasurer Arthur Sinodinos today  announced plans  to undo changes made by the previous Labor government to protect consumers from greedy financial planners. One of the proposed changes would water down a provision obliging financial advisors to always act in the best interests of their clients. The  ABC  reports that the Government also wants to remove the "opt-in" requirement, which forces financial advisors to contact fee-paying clients every two years to renew their contacts. It would also scrap rules requiring f

The Pope and the magic of the full glass- News and views for Friday 20 December

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News and views noted along the way. Pope Francis Rebukes "Marxist" Attack From Rush Limbaugh & Conservative Media  - " 'Marxist ideology is wrong. But I have met many Marxists in my life who are good people, so I don't feel offended." He added, "There is nothing in the exhortation that cannot be found in the social doctrine of the church.' The Pope expanded on his critique of 'trickle-down' economics, noting that 'The promise was that when the glass was full, it would overflow, benefitting the poor. But what happens instead, is that when the glass is full, it magically gets bigger nothing ever comes out for the poor'." World Bank president calls corruption 'Public Enemy No. 1'  - "The development institution, which long shied away from tackling corruption because it wanted to steer clear of politics, on Thursday said it plans to hire more experts in the rule of law and other governance issues." Is ‘M

The US’s tiny taper – News and views for Thursday 19 December

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News and views noted along the way. A Tiny Taper, In 2 Graphs  – “In the past five years, the Federal Reserve has created roughly $3 trillion out of thin air. The Fed uses the money it creates out of thin air to buy bonds. The idea is to drive down interest rates, which encourages people and businesses to borrow and spend money. It’s called quantitative easing. The big news today is that the Fed will soon start creating slightly less money out of thin air every month. Starting in Januray, the central bank will go from creating $85 billion every month to creating $75 billion a month. In the context of the roughly $3 trillion the Fed has already created, this change is vanishingly small. Intelligence Panel Recommends Limits On NSA Surveillance Spying Run Amok  - “Whatever we think of Snowden — self-aggrandizing creep or self-sacrificing crusader against creepy government spying or sociopath with stolen documents, as The Wall Street Journal put it, or someone who should ‘swing fr

Miranda forgot that Natasha has got friends in high places

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I suppose there comes a time when you have done the Opposition to death and you have to turn on your own lot. Well Miranda certainly did this morning and with quite a vengeance. Yet the Tele’s fearless columnist forgot one thing. Natasha might once have been a dreaded Australian Democrat who opposed the GST. But, as the Beastie Boys  put it ,  I got friends in high places that are keeping me high . She married into the right kind of political family. I mean, consider the connections. Her husband is described thus on his lobbyist firm’s website: Ian Smith co-founded Bespoke Approach in July 2008 and since then it has been working with major domestic and international businesses on a range of complex projects across Australia and internationally. One of the company’s founding principle was based on Ian’s belief in the engagement of former senior politicians to assist companies develop corporate strategies. Ian was a journalist before advising the South Australian Libera

How big banks help the ticket clipping of the poor

Your neighborhood pawn shop is propped up by big banks . From the  Washington Post’s Wonkblog : We usually think of payday lenders, pawn shops, rent-to-own stores and other high-cost loan operations as alternative forms of financing for people who are short of cash. But that’s merely a facade: They couldn’t operate without billions of dollars in cheap capital from the nation’s biggest banks. Reinvestment Partners, a North Carolina-based non-profit that advocates for the underbanked, put out a  report  Monday laying out how the system works, and just how much money flows through it — $5.5 billion, to be precise.

Shanahan doctors a devil’s debt number

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Don’t let a billion get in the way of a good headline. Two different versions of the gross debt figure in 10 years time

A ticket clipping update – Which bank?

From this morning’s  Fairfax business pages : An independent expert will investigate Commonwealth Bank’s online broker, CommSec, after the financial regulator found it pooled clients’ money and withdrew funds from client accounts for years without authorisation… It follows findings by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission that the broker and another CBA subsidiary, Ausiex, was withdrawing client money for daily cash settlements and shifting the bank’s own money into client trust accounts.

Edward Snowden and two great Orwellian truths – News and views for Wednesday 18 December

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News and views noted along the way. Orwell in America  – “Orwell spent his life loathing intellectuals and state technicians like Edward Snowden. He was sure they would betray the people. Well, Orwell did not always get it right and in this particular matter there can be no doubt that – as the cliché goes – if he was alive today the greatest political commentator of the 20th century would be supporting the young American. For Edward Snowden recognized two great Orwellian truths; first that liberty depends on millions of private lives kept private. As a fully paid-up non-deceived realist, Orwell would have argued the difficult case as to the point at which state secrecy should end and private life begin. Second, Snowden recognized that the War on Terror is no war and the quicker we drop the impossible abstraction of it all the better. Far better that we stick to what is ordinary: ordinary law, ordinary war, ordinary security, ordinary guys. Far better too that we stick to ordinar

Catfish and the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement.- News and views for Tuesday 17 December 2013

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News and views noted along the way. Battle Of The Bottom Feeder: U.S., Vietnam In Catfish Fight  – “Negotiators hoped to have the TPP trade deal wrapped up by the end of the year, but that’s not going to happen. There are still many outstanding issues — like catfish — that need to be resolved.” Fed Stimulus Blunted as Software Replaces Hardware Why Inequality Matters  – “In my view … the really crucial role of inequality in economic calamity has been political… What do the pre- and postcrisis consensuses have in common? Both were economically destructive: Deregulation helped make the crisis possible, and the premature turn to fiscal austerity has done more than anything else to hobble recovery. Both consensuses, however, corresponded to the interests and prejudices of an economic elite whose political influence had surged along with its wealth.” The Selling of Attention Deficit Disorder  – “The Number of Diagnoses Soared Amid a 20-Year Drug Marketing Campaign.” Secular Stagnat

Baling out university superannuation schemes

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Snuck away in today’s  Financial Review   story  on plans for a federal takeover from state governments of the administration of universities is an apparent costly rescue plan for the superannuation scheme for academics. The  Fin  report says: The Abbott government is also poised to relieve NSW of the burden of $2 billion of unfunded obligations for superannuation schemes operated by NSW universities. The federal government will take responsibility for 80 per cent of the unfunded obligations of the defined-benefit schemes. Academics, especially younger ones, should be grateful for the Commonwealth’s largesse for without it their retirement incomes are in big trouble. The rather sad story of UniSuper is not one that has received much coverage in the mainstream news pages. Superannuation is a complex subject for journalists to cover and the couple of attempts I made to draw attention to the university problem aroused little interest and thus can be included in the “failure” ca