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Showing posts from June, 2014

Let Them Eat Cash – the poor do not waste grants and other news and views for Monday 30 June

Prabowo continues his anti-democratic rhetoric  – “Prabowo’s statement on direct elections is another example of his anti-democratic rhetoric, which has been an insufficiently reported feature of the Indonesian presidential campaign.” Drink Up: NYC Ban On Big Sodas Canned  – “Big sodas can stay on the menu in the Big Apple after New York state’s highest court refused Thursday to reinstate the city’s first-of-its-kind size limit on sugary drinks.” E-voting experiments end in Norway amid security fears  – “Experiments with voting via the net were carried out during elections held in 2011 and 2013. But the trials have ended because, said the government, voters’ fears about their votes becoming public could undermine democratic processes. Political controversy and the fact that the trials did not boost turnout also led to the experiment ending. Let Them Eat Cash  – “The poor do not waste grants. Recently, two World Bank economists looked at 19 cash transfer studies in Latin America, Af

Which bank? The CBA’s credibility is so compromised that a royal commission into these matters is warranted.

Australia’s Commonwealth Bank has entered the ticket clippers big league. From the report of a Senate committee released today: In this case study, the committee examined misconduct that occurred between 2006 and 2010 by financial advisers and other staff at Commonwealth Financial Planning Limited (CFPL), part of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia Group (CBA). Advisers deliberately neglected their duties and placed their personal interests far above the interests of their clients. The assets of clients with conservative risk positions, such as retirees, were allocated into high-risk products without their knowledge to the financial benefit of the adviser, who received significant bonuses and recognition within CFPL as a ‘high performer’. There was forgery and dishonest concealment of material facts. Clients lost substantial amounts of their savings when the global financial crisis hit; thecrisis was also used to explain away the poor performance of portfolios. Meanwhile, it is all

Australian official job vacancy figures show some reason for optimism

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A slight upturn in the Australian Bureau of Statistics quarterly figures for job vacancies. Total job vacancies in May 2014 were 146,100, an increase of 2.1% from February 2014. The number of job vacancies in the private sector was 135,000 in May 2014, an increase of 2.0% from February 2014. The number of job vacancies in the public sector was 11,200 in May 2014, an increase of 4.3% from February 2014. (click to enlarge) An  analysis by Westpac  also released today of new jobs created suggests  Australia’s impressive jobs growth this year is somewhat undermined by details showing the gains have been concentrated to just a few sectors. New jobs are concentrated in the services, construction and real estate sectors. There has been a stagnation in jobs created for many years outside the mining, utilities, education, health, public and business services.

The latest legal setback for the UK's Barclays bank

Top NY securities regulator sues Barclays over ‘dark pool’ - FT.com : "New York’s top securities regulator has sued Barclays alleging the UK bank favoured high-speed traders using its “dark pool” trading venue while misleading institutional investors. Eric Schneiderman, the state attorney-general, said Barclays had expanded its dark pool, Barclays LX, to one of the biggest off-exchange venues “by telling investors they were diving into safe waters . . . Barclays’ dark pool was full of predators – there at Barclays’ invitation”." 'via Blog this'

An organised hypocrisy that made the News of the World very British indeed and other news and views for Wednesday 25 June

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A conspiracy involving not just the tabloids but their readers  - The  News of the World  was a unique and, for more than a century, highly successful British institution. Its longstanding success rested on a simple premise: that of hypocrisy. … We would all pretend to be shocked by what we read, in exchange for the pleasure of reading about it. In a country that, more than most, operates as an organised hypocrisy, that made the News of the World very British indeed. Scott Morrison’s foul bet on torture  - Asylum seekers at 50:50 risk of torture can be sent home. Libya holds elections to end post-Gaddafi instability Believe it or not: Karl Marx is making a comeback  – “It’s true. The ‘Communist Manifesto’ co-author has gotten a second life — and he has some advice for progressives. France seeks to shed reputation for rudeness to woo tourists  – “The Socialist government, desperately seeking ways to inject new life into the stuttering economy, is rolling out a plan to transfo

Australia in for a warmer season whether El Niño comes or not

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Warmer days and nights are more likely than not for Australia for July to September. The Bureau of Meteorology in its  latest national temperature outlook  puts the chances that the July to September maximum temperature outlook will exceed the median maximum temperature at greater than 60% over Australia. Chances are greater than 80% over southwest WA, southeast Queensland, northeast NSW, southern Victoria and Tasmania. So for every ten July to September outlooks with similar odds to these, says the Bureau, about six to eight of them would be warmer than average over these areas, while about two to four would be cooler. The chances that the average minimum temperature for July to September 2014 will exceed the long-term median also are greater than 60% over Australia. Chances rise to greater than 80% over southern and central WA, southern Victoria, Tasmania, and the eastern seaboard of NSW (see map above). The Bureau’s outlook says the warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean over

Renaming budget day as government wish-list day

In another three or four weeks it might be possible to make an intelligent assessment of the Australian federal budget for 2014-15. Until then I will continue to refrain from adding to the pointless analysis that has been occurring since Treasurer Joe Hockey released all those pages of documents outlining his wish-list.

Kevin 16 off and running for top UN job

Kevin Rudd is reportedly off and running hard in the  race to succeed Ban Ki-moon as secretary-general of the United Nations. While Ban will not leave office until the end of 2016,  World Politics Review   reports that a lot of pretty serious politicians want to run the UN. Two people who do seem to want to be secretary-general are both Antipodean ex-premiers: Helen Clark and Kevin Rudd. Clark, prime minister of New Zealand from 1999 to 2008, now runs the U.N. Development Program, and signaled her desire to replace Ban in an interview with the Guardian earlier this year. Her prospects would improve if Ban and she can secure a deal on future international development goals, which should be finalized at a U.N. summit in September 2015. Meanwhile Rudd, Australian prime minister from 2007 to 2010 and again briefly last year, has a strong reputation for top-level multilateral diplomacy. He was one of the few leaders said to have impressed President Barack Obama in G-20 debates during

My new political favourite – The Best Party shows the way

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The policies were unorthodox. Well, certainly the non-core ones. Electors were promised free towels at swimming pools, a polar bear for the zoo, the import of Jews, “so that someone who understands something about economics finally comes to Iceland”, a drug-free parliament by 2020, inaction (“we’ve worked hard all our lives and want to take a well-paid four-year break now”), Disneyland with free weekly passes for the unemployed (“where they can have themselves photographed with Goofy”), greater understanding for the rural population (“every Icelandic farmer should be able to take a sheep to a hotel for free”), free bus tickets. Then the core promise caveat. “We can promise more than any other party because we will break every campaign promise.” And the election result? The Best Party, described as anarcho-surrealists, were to govern Iceland’s capital city of Reykjavik for four years. Tages Anzeiger   provides delightful details  of the victory and its consequences. The le

Iraqis under ISIS control say their lives have gotten better and other news and views for Sunday 22 June

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Iraqis under ISIS control say their lives have gotten better  – “Perhaps the most important victory so far by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), the extremist group tearing through Iraq, was not overwhelming the much larger Iraqi military or even seizing vast areas of northwest Iraq, including the major city of Mosul. It was convincing regular Iraqis that have come under ISIS rule to trust them. … ISIS looks like it might be winning the battle for Iraqis’ hearts and minds in the Sunni areas it has seized, and this could be enormously bad for Iraq’s crisis. It could make ISIS more powerful and more resilient in the mostly-Sunni northwest. Maybe worse, it could increase the possibility of the crisis spiraling into all-out civil war.” Down Under  – a  New York Times  review of  ‘The Reef,’  by Iain McCalman – “By the end of McCalman’s transformative book, we feel the full force of this slow-motion emergency. In story after story of fascination and trepidation, in revel

A quiet week so Amanda brings back the fat cats – the commentariat daily for Sunday 22 June

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It’s been a slow news week with those dreaded Labor villains not providing much fodder for biting criticism. So what’s a woman to do for a Sunday column? Get stuck into fat cats. That’s what. Public servants are a tried and true, reliable piece of fair game. Hence Miranda Devine’s  Time to take the scalpel to fat cats  in  The Sunday Telegraph.  Did you know the head of Treasury earns $824,320 a year and the Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet a whopping $844,000? Well if Miranda thinks they are outrageous sums for running the country I wonder what she thinks of the tens of millions paid to those who run the country’s banks? Maybe she’ll tell us on the next slow-news Sunday. Nobody is laughing as clowns take over senate  asserts Piers Akerman in his  Tele  contribution as he comes to terms with the Abbott government being every bit as much a minority one as its immediate Labor predecessor. Writes Piers: “AT the end of this week, the current moderately sane Sen

Higher income for the finance industry, slower economic growth and a greater number of asset bubbles

Buttonwood: Counting the cost of finance | The Economist . …  finance was taking a heavier toll on the economy even before Lehman Brothers went under. That is the conclusion of a   new paper  by Guillaume Bazot of the Paris School of Economics. … The paper is a useful contribution to the debate about the role of the financial industry in the global economy. What justifies the high incomes earned by bankers and fund managers? One could argue that they have created a lower cost of capital for business in the form of low bond yields and high equity valuations. But that is a tricky case to make: low yields are more the consequence of central-bank policy and the low level of inflation. An alternative view is that these higher incomes are what economists call rents: excess incomes earned by those with a privileged economic position. The financial industry is protected because governments and central banks will act to rescue it when it falters, in a way they would not do for chemica

Health and health care in Australia at a crossroads and other news and views for Saturday 21 June

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Health and health care in Australia at a crossroads In 2008, the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) signed up to a National Healthcare Agreement to improve not only health outcomes for all Australians but also health system sustainability. How are they doing? The latest report by the COAG Reform Council—Healthcare in Australia 2012—13: Five years of performance—has good and bad news. It shows that life expectancy has increased for men (79·0 years to 79·9 years) and women (83·7 years to 84·3 years), deaths from circulatory disease have fallen (from 202·0 to 159·6 deaths per 100 000 people), as have deaths in children younger than 5 years (106·9 to 82·9 per 100 000 children) and the national smoking rate (from 19·1% to 16·3%). However, potentially preventable hospital admissions for acute conditions (1079·6 to 1198·2 per 100 000 people) and vaccine-preventable conditions (70·8 to 82·2 per 100 000 people) have increased. The report also shows worrying increases in the overwe

Gerard Henderson both writes and is written about - the commentariat daily for Saturday 21 June

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The Henderson gigs  – Gerard Henderson writing about other journalists, other journalists writing about Gerard Henderson, Gerard Henderson writing about other … and so on ad infinitum. Mike Seccombe knows how to play the game of sticking with the tried and true with this piece that confirms there’s nothing very innovative about  The Saturday Paper. Gerard himself in his weekend piece for  The Australian  gives an explanation of how  ” ‘Occupied’ East Jerusalem stunt confuses fact and fiction”  with the Lee Rhiannon’s Green-left line being the culprit because it only undermines the peace process. He notes: “Reports from the committee meeting have tended to run the line that Brandis changed Australia’s attitude to the Middle East peace process by describing some of the territories that Israel attained consequent upon the 1967 Six Day War as ‘dispute’ rather than ‘occupied’. In fact, Bishop had flagged the Coalition’s position on this matter in an interview with ABC Radio National Bre