Who would have thought (Roy Rodgers) 6:10 AM

Lone,

I hear you. Its time. Time to drop our pencils, slam down our keyboards and smack the hairy bitch!!

Someone needs to stand up to the wowsers, the regulators ,the preventative health nazis and tim costello.

its time!

The good oil 6:00 AM

Twelve months after the failure of Lehman Brothers, introduction of TARP, a freeze-up of interbank lending, and the beginning of a stock market roller coaster ride, what do we know about what really happened? What really caused the housing bubble and how did that lead to the crisis? If the crisis was the result of many mistakes, how should we go about thinking about what kinds of mistakes were made and who is really at fault?

Russ Roberts, PhD and Arnold Kling, PhD present the findings of their in-depth investigations of the causes and nature of this unique economic event.

Link to pod cast

Re: Who would have thought (Lone Ranger) 3:31 PM

Further to your post, Roy, it really is laughable that "racism" is the depth of analysis attempted ABC journalists (and much of the mainstream media generally). The 2-3 million people that marched through Washington this week were protesting big government, socilaised health care and big brother, and were demanding freedom and the right to be left alone to live their lives. The libertarian movement is picking up steam for the first time in 100 years in the US, and the founders of the nation would thoroughly approve. This is a question of liberty - not race (why is the left so obsessed with race anyway?).

The tragedy from my perspective is that there is no such movement here. Let me quote from the 1909 Australia year book with regards to the Australian character:

The Australian at present is little other than a transplanted Briton, with the
essential characteristics of his British forbears, the desire for freedom from
restraint, however, being perhaps more strongly accentuated.

The key point is not the the Australian was thought to be like the Briton, but rather the emphasis on his (or her) dislike to restraint, of control. What happened in the intervening 100 years? From a freedom loving, independent people who were ashamed to take hand outs (ask your grandparents), we have become a nation of welfare dependent hand-out junkies, who seem to think that the "rich" should pay for our health care, schools, roads and everyhting else that Government does and probably should not. Where are the lovers of freedom? What happened to the independent Australian who supported himself and his family? What happened to the suspicion of big government? Where is our Washington? Where is our Ayn Rand?

This is how free people become enslaved.

Who would have thought (Roy Rodgers) 12:10 AM

If you've been following this blog you would no doubt be familiar with the total disregard some of the contributors have for economic competence of the aussie media. Personally, I seem to be in a state of perpetual confusion ... its really my own fault ... i watch way too much ABC (or as its otherwise known the AlpBC).

The last couple of days have proven to be very perplexing.

For a start I cant begin to understand why my lovely little abc reporter felt he had to whole heatedly endorse the latest load of crap from the democrats in the states that attributes obama's growing unpopularity to RACISM.

At no point in the good five minutes of coverage this story got, did my lovely little red fisted abc reporter even mention that some of the protest against obama may result from his recent attempts to socialise a health system in what must be the most liberal country on earth. No way would that piss people off ... no they must be racist.

And is there any evidence to back this claim of racism? well no .. i didn't see a single white sheet or burning cross on any of the footage. But i did see allot of placards protesting obama's proposed health policy. If to simply disagree with obama's policies is racist, then the man is the single greatest threat to American democracy since FDR. It is basically akin to instituting an African American infallibility clause.

The other thing that has left me incredulous is the seeming lack of comment regarding the fundamental precedent set by the Commonwealth in showing total disregard for private property rights. I'm talking TELSTRA.

No one has yet mentioned that this week saw for the very first time in the history of the Australian Federation, a Commonwealth government demand a totally privately owned company divest itself of a significant proportion of its assets.

It doesn't matter if you love or hate TELSTRA. No matter how much more competitive you think the world is going to be, no matter how cheaper you think your phone bill will be, you can not ignore nor underestimate the importance of what the Commonwealth is proposing to do.

Never before has any Australian government ever forced through coercion a private company to effectively dissolve .... NEVER.

Whats more they don't actually have the power to do it up front. They have to do it via black mail. Gone is any pretense at procedural fairness any attempt to avoid administrative bias. They are basically holding the company to ransom, in such a way that would totally violate the procurement policy for any state government, you can't exclude a company from a tender simply beacuase you dont like its market share ( i didn't mention the commonwealth's procurement policy cause I'm assuming its okay with them).

Love TELSTRA or hate it ... you should still be alarmed at this attack on one of the fundamental building blocks of our modern economy ...

Obama the joker? 6:38 AM

This is a little bit creepy ... heres the obama joker image thats become so popular in the states. ... One gets the feeling obama's honeymoon is over.

Deteriorating current account balance not a positive sign (Lone Ranger) 7:41 PM

The latest Balance of Payments numbers are out from the ABS and they do not tell a pretty story. The current account balance on goods and services (exports less imports) has deteriorated markedly in recent months. In of itself this is hardly a surprise, as Australia has generally had a services and goods trade deficit for decades.

Of most interest is the balance of trade for goods, which deteriorated from surpluses in the Dec '08 quarter ($3.2 billion) and Mar '09 quarter ($4 billion) to a deficit in the Jun '09 quarter (-$633 million). This is a concern because while our imports have decreased slightly from $64 billion in the Dec '08 quarter to $48 billion in the Jun '09 quarter, the value of goods exports have collapsed from $67 billion to $47 billion in the same period. While volumes have not much changed (yet), export prices for coal and minerals are way down, and this at a time where China has been stockpiling and, if anything, fuelling demand.

This begs the question - is Australia likely to have a "recovery" at a time of falling commodity prices and, potentially, export volumes if demand remains weak? These statistics are not those of an economy poised for growth and we should be alarmed about what is says about the state of our key export markets. The fun may be just beginning.

More Ramirez (Roy Rodgers) 12:40 AM