The RP Data-Rismark Home Value Index recorded a decline in the month of October. In raw and seasonally-adjusted terms, capital city home values slid 0.2 per cent and 0.5 per cent, respectively over the month of October. Over the 10 months to end October 2011, Australian capital city dwelling values have declined by 2.8 per cent [...]
READ MORENovember, 2011
The biggest mass default in history?
The view of The Daily Telegraph’s Jeremy Warner on the European financial crisis: What they are preparing for is the biggest mass default in history. There’s no orderly way of doing this. European finance and trade is too far integrated to allow for an easy unwinding of contracts. It’s going to be anarchy.
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Gloom from The Economist
In 50 years of reading it – and a few writing about economics for it as well – I cannot remember ever thinking that The Economist was am alarmist publication. Hence my uncomfortable feeling when reading the weekly promotional email from its editor-in-chief this morning: “untold damage not only just to Europe but to the entire [...]
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Banks rigging markets to make an extra profit? Well fancy that!
Around the world, explains Bloomberg, interest rates on an estimated $360 trillion of financial instruments are based on a rate determined in London at 10am every morning by representatives of 19 banks meeting under the auspices of the century-old British Bankers’ Association. What the bankers are deciding on is Libor, the London interbank offered rate, based on [...]
READ MORETwo new taxes make Gillard a rare and courageous politician
Julia Gillard will end this parliamentary year with a rare achievement for a developed area politician. In an age when politicians everywhere else run away at the very mention of the words “tax increases”, she will have introduced two new ones. With a carbon tax and a resources tax the woman certainly does not lack [...]
READ MOREYoung boys are the worst
For our survey of the day we turn to showering. While girls spend the longest time in the bathroom it is young boys who take the longest showers – an average of 10 minutes a time according to a survey by soap manufacturer Unilever. And the average shower length for all members of the family is eight [...]
READ MORELife imitates art
For Monday’s snippets I poached a cartoon from a blog that featured a hypothetical pair of news commentators. This might serve as a reminder: Well today I offer you the real thing from Fox News via TPM Bill O’Reilly and Fox News host Megyn Kelly discuss what happened with the pepper spray on the US Davis campus last [...]
READ MOREAnd while on the subject of things in the eyes
If you think our political debate is robust have a look at this exchange in the South Korean parliament. The lads were just having a little debate about whether there should be a free trade agreement wth the United States. I am not sure if the tear gas was let off by the Korean MP playing the [...]
READ MOREMeasuring the two speed economy
Western Australia is clearly the leader and New South Wales well behind as the laggard when it comes to the country’s economic growth over the last decade The Australian Bureau of Statistics this morning released state accounts figures for 2010-11 and they show the dominance of the West is by no means ended. When the [...]
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