The Reserve Bank Governor declared Australia’s financial system sound as the US yesterday bailed out the world’s biggest insurer, American International Group, with a $A107 billion loan in exchange for what amounted to nationalisation.
Speaking just hours later Glenn Stevens told company directors in Sydney that the condition of Australian banks was “light years away from what is happening in
If you remember that slogan you will probably also remember the Coalition's similarly appalling: "Aspirational Nationalism".
Pardon me while I. . .
Anyway, today the Reserve Bank Governor Glenn Stevens made it clear what he thinks of "Go for Growth".
It makes you pray that John Howard and Peter Costello didn't mean it.
Here's the relevant bit from Stevens:
"The economics of full employment
Its already on the shelf
The Rudd Government's claim that it must wait for a review before raising the age pension has been undermined by the revelation it considered a detailed submission on the question before the May budget.
Documents released to the Seven Network under the Freedom of Information Act reveal cabinet considered an 83-page submission, including detailed options, on increasing
Search me
Malcolm Turnbull may be the best connected leader the party's ever had.
His links extend into the law, high finance, personal finance, information technology, academia, the media and the Australian Labor Party.
He first made contact with the labour movement while packing fruit at the Sydney markets in between finishing school and starting university.
As he remembers it, “I think I
I don't know exactly why, but tonight's account lifted my spirits:
"Babcock and Brown plunged 33% to a record low, Allco fell nearly 20%, and Macquarie was down 7% to its lowest in four years."
I'm sure it shouldn't have.
He is not in it to be leader. He won't stand today.
Is it the money? Not that either.
Whatever reasons Peter Costello has for continuing to hang around, they don't include money.
Right now, as a backbencher, the former Treasurer is earning $127,000 per year.
But calculations performed by The Age using tables prepared by the Department of Finance suggest that if he retired instead, his annual
Its already been done
The Rudd Government's claim that it must wait for a review before raising the age pension has been undermined by the revelation it considered a detailed submission on the question before the May budget.
Documents released to the Seven Network under the Freedom of Information Act reveal cabinet considered an 83-page submission, including detailed options, on increasing
...to get good statistics
Today's Adelaide Advertiser reports:
"An 85-year-old stroke victim and his 80-year-old wife have been threatened with fines of $110 for every day they refuse to be part of an Australian Bureau of Statistics employment survey.
Antonia Van Den Berg and her invalid husband, Bert, of Kilburn, are among 27,000 households used by the ABS for its monthly survey to determine
NSW. The latest update.
Why oh why didn't we kick out this government on either of the last two occasions when we had a chance?
Suddenly we're optimists again. Or at least half of us are.
The combination of tax cuts, interest rate cuts and lower petrol prices appears to have brought on a surge in consumer confidence in the past month - amidst a certain type of consumer.
Men are feeling very good – perhaps because they've got more of the tax cuts than have their partners.
For the first time in a year more of them feel
Yep! It's one of the really bright ideas in the Cutler Innovation Review, named Venturous Australia.
It's in the excellent Chapter 7:
Recommendation 7.1: The Australian Government should experiment with the use of prizes to stimulate innovation. funding should be modest - say $5 million over two years with an external evaluation after three years.
What's so bright about the idea?
Patents (
We'll see
The Innovation Minister Kim Carr will releases the Review of the National Innovation System in Melbourne at 2.30pm.
The members include Terry Cutler, Nicholas Gruen (well-known to readers of this blog), Steve Dowrick of the ANU, and Glyn Davis, the co-convenor of the 2020 summit - so it might be good.
"The review has made a broad range of recommendations including innovation in
...until you ask the economists’ question: at what cost?”
Nicholas Gruen with an excellent column in today's Financial Review.
It's about how NSW Labor dug its own grave.
On the two interest rate rises earlier this year:
“I don’t think they were unnecessary. I think they had to be done.”
On rate cuts to come:
“I can’t come here and precommit or make a forecast about what the board’s going to do in forthcoming meetings.”
On recession:
“I think it would be dishonest to deny that there’s any possibility at all of recession. There's clearly some probability of
Here are his opening remarks to the parliamentary hearing in Melbourne, still under way.
The interrogation is live on the web until 12.00pm.
When the Reserve Bank Governor Glenn Stevens appears before the parliament's economics committee in Melbourne this morning he is likely to be asked about the divide between the “two Australias” – the states that benefit directly from the resources boom and those that do not.
He is less likely to be asked about a more embarrassing divide – one that neither Labor nor the Coalition is keen to air
Which is great news.
If Labor doesn't fall in WA, it will fall it in the ACT next month.
Democracy thrives when there's diversity and the possibility of change.
But how did we ever get to be Labor coast to coast in the first place.
I'd thought it was to do with services. States specialise in delivering services, and we elect Labor because at least it believes in providing them (however
I've been fascinated by Rupert Murdoch for as long as I can remember.
I have read many many books about his life - which seems to never end.
The best is Bruce Page’s The Murdoch Archipelago.
Murdoch is presenting this year's ABC Boyer lectures in November.
Now a new biography is underway, written by Michael Wolff with full cooperation from (but no vetting by) the man himself.
Vanity Fair
Some wiz on YouTube foresaw the whole thing back in June.
It's worth watching again this morning while reading the Saturday papers and marvelling at the wonder that is NSW.
Convergence.
We should be aiming for one carbon emissions entitlement per person.
This would mean that China, India etc. could continue to expand emissions (right now they are way below us in emissions per person) until they reach the level we will have reached as we wind back our emissions per person.
Because Australia has (and will keep having) a strong immigration program - our absolute
The table in today's just-released Garnaut Report update sums it up:
"Australia should put its strongest possible efforts into securing a global agreement to limit emissions to no more than 550 parts per million CO2-e and encourage the world onto a lower emissions path as soon as feasible.
450ppm or lower would suit Australian interests better than a 550ppm goal.
However, the Review has
Wayne Swan in parliament yesterday, defending his tax cuts this way:
"We anticipated, in our Budget, what is now occurring – we were prepared for the challenges now unfolding, and we got it right."
Tim Colebatch writes:
Hang on, Wayne. Wasn't the issue that you'd promised the tax cuts in October, and felt bound to deliver them? If you knew in October that within months, the economy would be
Curious, and arguably extra-legal
Intending buyers of luxury cars hoping to escape the tax hike will have to cool their heels.
Although the Senate rejected the budget measure yesterday, the government's decision to reintroduce it when the Senate next meets means that car dealers are under notice that the extra tax may still have to be paid.
The Age understands that the Tax Office will write to
Victoria has emerged as a surprise engine room of the Australian economy with the latest figures suggesting that it was responsible for almost half of the nation’s economic growth in the June quarter.
The National Accounts show that Victoria contributed 0.4 percentage points to domestic demand growth in the quarter (p7), almost half of the nationwide total of 0.9%.
Western Australia, previously
Victoria has emerged as a surprise engine room of the Australian economy with the latest figures suggesting that it was responsible for almost half of the nation’s economic growth in the June quarter.
The National Accounts show that Victoria contributed 0.4 percentage points to domestic demand growth in the quarter (p7), almost half of the nationwide total of 0.9%.
Western Australia, previously
The ABS says employment jumped 14,600 in August.
But it is only (95%) confident the real change is somewhere between a slide of 45,800 and a jump of 120,800.
A surprise dive in Australia’s unemployment rate has thrown future interest rate cuts into doubt.
The unemployment rate fell from 4.3% to 4.1% in August as an extra 14,600 Australians found new jobs, half of them in Victoria.
The
Neither.
From today's RBA Annual Report:
"The announcement of a change in monetary policy is normally sufficient in itself for the market to move the cash rate to the new target."
...for Australia's Reserve Bank
An interest rate cut at the next Reserve Bank board meeting on October 7 is now a live possibility as a result of the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the United States.
The minutes of the Bank’s most recent board meeting on September 2 released yesterday contain no hint that there would be a follow-up cut. They say the decision to cut in September was reached on “
I don't know exactly why, but tonight's account lifted my spirits:
"Babcock and Brown plunged 33% to a record low, Allco fell nearly 20%, and Macquarie was down 7% to its lowest in four years."
I'm sure it shouldn't have.
Here's a profile I wrote the last time he was elevated:
A few years back as he was running for Liberal Party preselection a friend asked Malcolm Turnbull why he hadn’t instead decided to enter parliament through the Labor Party.
“I’ve thought about it” he is said to have replied, “But the Labor Party would never accept a multi-millionaire as its leader.”
Asked yesterday to confirm the story
He is not in it to be leader. He won't stand today.
Is it the money? Not that either.
Whatever reasons Peter Costello has for continuing to hang around, they don't include money.
Right now, as a backbencher, the former Treasurer is earning $127,000 per year.
But calculations performed by The Age using tables prepared by the Department of Finance suggest that if he retired instead, his
...to get good statistics
Today's Adelaide Advertiser reports:
"An 85-year-old stroke victim and his 80-year-old wife have been threatened with fines of $110 for every day they refuse to be part of an Australian Bureau of Statistics employment survey.
Antonia Van Den Berg and her invalid husband, Bert, of Kilburn, are among 27,000 households used by the ABS for its monthly survey to determine
The ABS says employment jumped 14,600 in August.
But it is only (95%) confident the real change is somewhere between a slide of 45,800 and a jump of 120,800.
A surprise dive in Australia’s unemployment rate has thrown future interest rate cuts into doubt.
The unemployment rate fell from 4.3% to 4.1% in August as an extra 14,600 Australians found new jobs, half of them in Victoria.
The
NSW. The latest update.
Why oh why didn't we kick out this government on either of the last two occasions when we had a chance?
Suddenly we're optimists again. Or at least half of us are.
The combination of tax cuts, interest rate cuts and lower petrol prices appears to have brought on a surge in consumer confidence in the past month - amidst a certain type of consumer.
Men are feeling very good – perhaps because they've got more of the tax cuts than have their partners.
For the first time in a year more of them feel
We'll see
The Innovation Minister Kim Carr will releases the Review of the National Innovation System in Melbourne at 2.30pm.
The members include Terry Cutler, Nicholas Gruen (well-known to readers of this blog), Steve Dowrick of the ANU, and Glyn Davis, the co-convenor of the 2020 summit - so it might be good.
"The review has made a broad range of recommendations including innovation in
...until you ask the economists’ question: at what cost?”
Nicholas Gruen with an excellent column in today's Financial Review.
It's about how NSW Labor dug its own grave.
On the two interest rate rises earlier this year:
“I don’t think they were unnecessary. I think they had to be done.”
On rate cuts to come:
“I can’t come here and precommit or make a forecast about what the board’s going to do in forthcoming meetings.”
On recession:
“I think it would be dishonest to deny that there’s any possibility at all of recession. There's clearly some probability of
Here are his opening remarks to the parliamentary hearing in Melbourne, still under way.
The interrogation is live on the web until 12.00pm.
When the Reserve Bank Governor Glenn Stevens appears before the parliament's economics committee in Melbourne this morning he is likely to be asked about the divide between the “two Australias” – the states that benefit directly from the resources boom and those that do not.
He is less likely to be asked about a more embarrassing divide – one that neither Labor nor the Coalition is keen to air
Which is great news.
If Labor doesn't fall in WA, it will fall it in the ACT next month.
Democracy thrives when there's diversity and the possibility of change.
But how did we ever get to be Labor coast to coast in the first place.
I'd thought it was to do with services. States specialise in delivering services, and we elect Labor because at least it believes in providing them (however
I've been fascinated by Rupert Murdoch for as long as I can remember.
I have read many many books about his life - which seems to never end.
The best is Bruce Page’s The Murdoch Archipelago.
Murdoch is presenting this year's ABC Boyer lectures in November.
Now a new biography is underway, written by Michael Wolff with full cooperation from (but no vetting by) the man himself.
Vanity Fair
Some wiz on YouTube foresaw the whole thing back in June.
It's worth watching again this afternoon while reading the Saturday papers and marvelling at the wonder that is NSW.
Convergence.
We should be aiming for one carbon emissions entitlement per person.
This would mean that China, India etc. could continue to expand emissions (right now they are way below us in emissions per person) until they reach the level we will have reached as we wind back our emissions per person.
Because Australia has (and will keep having) a strong immigration program - our absolute
The table in today's just-released Garnaut Report update sums it up:
"Australia should put its strongest possible efforts into securing a global agreement to limit emissions to no more than 550 parts per million CO2-e and encourage the world onto a lower emissions path as soon as feasible.
450ppm or lower would suit Australian interests better than a 550ppm goal.
However, the Review has
Wayne Swan in parliament yesterday, defending his tax cuts this way:
"We anticipated, in our Budget, what is now occurring – we were prepared for the challenges now unfolding, and we got it right."
Tim Colebatch writes:
Hang on, Wayne. Wasn't the issue that you'd promised the tax cuts in October, and felt bound to deliver them? If you knew in October that within months, the economy would be
Curious, and arguably extra-legal
Intending buyers of luxury cars hoping to escape the tax hike will have to cool their heels.
Although the Senate rejected the budget measure yesterday, the government's decision to reintroduce it when the Senate next meets means that car dealers are under notice that the extra tax may still have to be paid.
The Age understands that the Tax Office will write to
Curious, and arguably extra-legal
Intending buyers of luxury cars hoping to escape the tax hike will have to cool their heels.
Although the Senate rejected the budget measure yesterday, the government's decision to reintroduce it when the Senate next meets means that car dealers are under notice that the extra tax may still have to be paid.
The Age understands that the Tax Office will write to
Australia has just recorded its 17th consecutive year of economic growth, a result without president.
There’s every sign we’ll reach an 18th.
Sure, the rate of economic growth has slowed, but the important thing is that it is continuing.
State governments such as Victoria’s have embarked on very big capital works programs to help, and the rest of the world has helped by boosting our buying
Gittins: YOU beauty! Interest rates have been cut and happy days are here again. For good measure, we've even got petrol prices coming down.
Sorry, don't be too sure about that. The Reserve Bank has cut its official interest rate only because times are getting tougher.
McCrann: YESTERDAY'S Reserve Bank interest rate cut might seem exactly like all the others that have started a 'rate-cutting
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