For decades SNOOTS have been hunting down whiches and replacing them with thats . Whenever a SNOOT discovers the relative pronoun which introducing a restrictive clause, the writer responsible will drop several notches in her esteem. For a SNOOT , knowing which relative pronou...
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I have separate contracts for all of the above. Sounds daft to me. I note that TPG now has an 'all you can eat' mobile for $59.95 and it's an ISP and provides me with VoIP. But I get mobile broadband from Three, mobile phone from Optus and a basic phone connection from Telstra...
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The financial crisis has been the making of Gordon Browne we're told. While Hank Paulson was holding masterclasses in crony capitalism Gordon Browne's rescue package showed how it was done. His recapitalising the banks by buying equity in them was right out of the textbook, ma...
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But I would say that wouldn't I? From today's Age . IT'S crunch time at the Henry tax review. . . . The good news is that many of the ideas that will work are quite simple. . . . These good ideas may be simple, but they are also disturbingly big. None is bigger than destroying...
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I wish I had more time to look at all this stuff, which is very suggestive of interesting things. I have a proposal for you, micro-economic reform has been basically right in trying to make markets more competitive, but it's done some serious damage along the way, and one way...
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This is an interesting article about small banking in the US - the US have always had a thing about small banks and there are plenty of them around. A lot of them are trundling right through the crisis. They tend to know their customers better. This snippet of news from Austra...
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From Rory's newsletter I was in Canberra yesterday, presenting at the Federal Treasury and the Parliamentary Library. Over the past year, I've often been the most pessimistic person in the room. My second presentation yesterday, however, followed one by Dr Steve Keen (google,...
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There are currently three schools of thought on how best to address the current global crisis. One takes the view that it is all due to more expensive financing- not due to decreased demand. Peter Auer, Raphael Auer and Simon Wehrmuller want to rely exclusively on reducing the...
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Richard Hickox, 1948-2008 Another case of not appreciating something fully until you've lost it . I never met him, but spent many happy hours within metres of him, from my usual vantage point in Row B (the best value for money in the House), so I feel a certain bond. This was...
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This is a letter written by the ATO. Someone sent it to me. The letter is not addressed to me. I'm not joking or making it up Cancelling your Australian business number For your information and action We wish to advise you that your Australian business number (ABN) xxxxxxxxx m...
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Peter Boettke has written a piece to introduce the main elements of Austrian economics in ten points . The Science of Economics Proposition 1: Only individuals choose. Proposition 2: The study of the market order is fundamentally about exchange behavior and the institutions wi...
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Free riding is the engine of productivity growth. People see something and copy it. Clothes, business methods, recipes. But there are also things that deliberately prevent free riding. Copyright, Patents that kind of thing. Unfortunately we've pursued the metaphor of property...
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A special question was inserted in the latest Newspoll. It found that 56% of voters would be concerned if the federal budget were to go into deficit, as a result of further government spending in the new year. Women (64%) were the most skeptical about deficits, while men (50%...
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When Hunter S. Thompson returned to Louisville in the early 1960s, he found a city proud of its progress on race relations . "Racial segregation has been abolished in nearly all white public places", he wrote. But even though many of the legal barriers to desegregation had bee...
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One day last week I came into the office to find an email from my boss time-stamped 2:46am (and no, he wasnt in another time-zone) asking what, technically, is a depression. What follows is a slightly expanded version of my answer. There is a very old joke which says a recessi...
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Declaration of interest, the artist is my spouse, but don't let that prejudice you! Kilmeny Niland has produced a prequel to the best selling Aussie Night Before Christmas. The Aussie Day Before Christmas hot off the press, following two other books earlier in the year, Two To...
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Peter Klein at Organizations and Markets has pointed out that the US has a thriving auto industry that does not need to be bailed out. The US has one of the most vibrant, dynamic, and efficient automobile industries in the world. It produces several million cars, trucks, and S...
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Panic seized markets this week. Just one asset class is deemed safe: the liabilities of highly-rated governments. The price of a barrel of oil is below $50. The dividend yield on the S&P 500 is higher than the yield on US 10-year treasuries. The yield on short-dated US inflati...
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As Krugman points out , the situation in the US is a pretty sad sight, with the lamest of lame duck presidents fiddling while the economy burns. This is a pretty ridiculous situation. Why not do what they do with buildings and start using them before they are officially opened...
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It seemed like a nice idea to me, but I got talked out of it - by Clive Crook - whose explanation of the problem I rather enjoyed. I think choosing Hillary would be a mistake. Not because of Bill. . . . they are not exactly chained together. Equally, if Hillary were the best c...
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By the end of the 1950s American car makers were losing market share to cheap European imports. Volkswagen's Beetle , Renault's Dauphine and the Fiat 600 were all cheaper, more fuel efficient and easier to park than full-sized American cars. By 1959 imports had captured almost...
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The Ships From Imagination to the Blank Page. A difficult crossing, the waters dangerous. At first sight the distance seems small, yet what a long voyage it is, and how injurious sometimes for the ships that undertake it. The first injury derives from the highly fragile nature...
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I've been reading an interesting - and much too long - paper by Paul David on the historical origins of 'open science (pdf). It is fascinating and deserves a more serious post than this - but I don't have the time. What's prompted this rush into cyberprint is finding a skerric...
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Set out by yours truly on BNET here .
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The question arose on Organizations and Markets , which industries will be next to hold out their hands for bailout money? Will the massage and sexual favours industry be there in line? A column in Slate shed some light on this topic . It seems that the high end of the industr...
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From today's Fin: As had been the case a month earlier, the papers sent out to members of the Reserve Bank Board the Friday before their most recent meeting on Melbourne Cup Day contained a recommendation that the cash rate be lowered by 50 basis points. However, whereas RBA G...
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Today's Financial Review column. Eminent economist Brad Delong despaired at news of George W Bush's second electoral victory four years ago: The American political system . . . appears incapable of setting out the central fiscal [or budgetary] policy issues in ways that give v...
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Peter Boettke makes a point about the role of tariff protection in the US leading the transition from the Great Crash to the Great Depression. In the context of the Great Depression, one has to remember that after the stock market crash in 1929 market corrections were set in m...
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My posting of a request for people interested in providing research assistance was the most successful bit of job advertising I've ever done.* So why not a little more? Peach Home Loans needs constant media relations work, and its hard to find people who are good at it. Accord...
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THE Victorian State Parliament has resumed sitting. In the front row there is an empty seat normally occupied by my husband, Theo. He remains in self-imposed exile, accused of a crime so awful that it is a struggle for me to fit inside my head that his name (and mine) is assoc...
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I wrote about the Paul Woolley centre for capital market dysfunction a while back . It may not surprise you that Wolley is continuing to get attention, not least in Prospect Magazine. Well worth a read .
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Many people have drawn false parallels between protectionism and deficit hawks. Whereas a retreat from protectionism generally causes pain to many people (and calls for a compensating device), a retreat from recession-driven deficits is an unmitigated bad thing for everyone. S...
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The Bishop of Harare, Rt Rev Dr Sebastian Bakare, will be in Australia from 20 November to 5 December with a circuit in NSW including Sydney, Nowra, Goulburn, Wagga Wagga, , Dubbo, Tamworth, Coffs Harbour, and Gosford. These matters are not on my normal beat but it seems that...
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Barrie Kosky is a big hit with people who are vastly more knowledgeable about theatre than me. He's very big in Europe. So maybe he's just the ticket. My two exposures to his theatre have been strikingly similar. At the end of something I went to at the Sydney Opera House I sn...
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These are difficult times for liberals. The mood around the world is turning against them. Politicians find it easier to blame crazy economists and greedy managers for financial turmoil than to understand and fix their own mistakes. Free-marketers still have the evidence of ec...
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Is there any left wing version of this ? Is there any Australian version of it? Perhaps Alan Jones' malevolence comes close on the Australian right. Given the prominence of these guys, it's scary. Then again, perhaps it shouldn't be taken too seriously. Like 'World Championshi...
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Those in Canberra on the appropriate day might like to come to a free seminar being run by the Queensland University of Technology which is, like the State in which it resides a national leader on access to public sector information. Extracts from the official invite sent roun...
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With intended irony, I christen Paul Krugman the maestro of the column. Here's his latest one. I've only read the first two paragraphs but they illustrate his virtuosity of the form. I'll post the rest of the column below the fold. Kevin, are you listening. Say 'deficit' three...
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Troppo has never had a vision statement. I loathe and abhore them. Indeed I regard them as just so much recriment. Which makes me suggest that we can hold a competition for a Troppo vision statement which contains a good smattering of a bunch of archaic English words that some...
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Why Obama Should Copy Bush (Really!) By Jonathon Cohn You hear lots of talk about which former president Barack Obama should use as a model. Bill Clinton comes up regularly. Franklin Roosevelt, too. But what about the guy in the White House now? I know, President Bushs approva...
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Having read Ken Henry's recent speech , I wanted to do something for Crikey! on it, and proposed something for Friday, but they wanted it today - which gave me 45 minutes. The result is below. If I would have liked to have put some things better, I got my main messages across....
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Like Oscar Wilde said (I think), "I can resist anything except temptation". More here . A long literature in psychology, as well as a more recent theory literature in economics, suggests that prolonged exposure to a tempting stimulus can eventually lead people to ¨Dsuccumb¡¬ t...
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For me anyway. It's on philosophy, the rights of cognitively imparied people and stuff like that. And it's long for a blog post. It might not be your cup of tea at all, but I thought it was great. It's here . For some reason unknown to me, comments are closed on the blog it's...
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For more detail click here .
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I mentioned an art exhibition by a 'second generation Dunera Boy' in an earlier post and I went along on Sunday. I found it very affecting and bought a painting - they're very cheap! I'm afraid the Jewish Museum gives the complete shudders every time I go. Upstairs one walks i...
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From today's Fin: There was hope that todays NSW mini-budget might address the states real problems. But it seems the government will merely increases taxes and reduce spending while selling the odd asset. There will be no major reform. If this is right, the NSW government has...
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"People who talk about a bubble are blowing smoke,'' said real estate economist Michael Carney. It was February 2005 and Carney was confident that house prices in California wouldn't fall. But by the end of the year the market turned. And between August 2007 and August 2008, C...
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Interesting to see that the ACT party , led by Rodney Hyde, has a slice of the action in New Zealand. The party is described as the most free market party to have seats in Parliament anywhere in the world. When I ran into Rodney Hide at the Mont Pelerin conference in Christchu...
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Paul Krugman was always critical of Obama for not being more partisan. We'll see what happens. In my ignorance I'm expecting Obama to be like Clinton - a pro when it comes to policy who hires the best advice he can get unlike Republicans who haven't done that since - well perh...
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A nice essay linked to from Crooked Timber. Here it is as edited on CT - but for the original go here . Via Cosma , Canadian historian Rob MacDougall on a characteristic American tendency to see radical social change as the inevitable expression of values expressed and promise...
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As Fred Argy reports, the Government is still toying with the disastrous policy of going with the Hollowmen's fiscal strategy in a recession - which is to obfuscate about whether or not you'll run a deficit until you can't obfuscate any more at which time you go (shamefacedly)...
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I watched in bemusement as the RBA took its time lowering rates in 1990. They've been much better this time. Still, it all looks pretty odd to me. We know things have changed. There seems to be general consensus that rates should and will fall further. The formula from a week...
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I find it incredible that Bletchley Park, the birthplace of modern computing, the place that won the Battle of the Atlantic without which the Allies may not have won World War II is finding the going tough to survive and thrive as a museum . I guess it's unthinkable that it wo...
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After reading todays column by Michael Stutchbury (Tanner needs to sharpen his razor gang to stay in surplus), where he urges that the Government should not fatten the budgets structural bottom line, I remain as bemused as ever. The Governments fiscal strategy is clearly defin...
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Here's a graph of the swing to and against Democrats and Republicans. Arizona stands out - McCain's home state. But the real source of amazement for me is Loisiana - including from the looks of it New Orleans. Perhaps it reflects the fact that they had a big clean-out of the r...
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I've recently finished reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb's first book Fooled by randomness . It's not long or difficult, but it's episodic and easily pick upable and put downable. And so I've put it down a lot - and picked it up again a lot - for a few months. Anyway when I came a...
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Learn out loud sells and gives away spoken books and other things. And they are giving away an MP3 reading of Kafka's Metamorphosis . I have no idea if the reading is any good.
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This is an interesting article on things at the cutting edge of healthcare (if you're a free market type). If you're not such a free market type, there may be some things at the other cutting edge of community medicine and other things - feel free to let us know in comments. I...
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Peter Beinart sees the rejection of Sarah Palin as the death knell of ratbag right-wing ideology as the Republicans' key to success in US politics. I hope he's right, and I'm going to propose a dialectical explanation for the demise of the Karl Rove Era. I was struck at the ti...
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In an earlier colum n I outlined the problems of the cognitively challenged 'Tania'. Tania is not cognitively challenged because she's stupid. She is cognitively challenged because impossible demands are made on her cognitive faculties. That's what I argued with regard to the...
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Ten year old Alex has spent all day very close to a bright red, brand new Kookaburra cricket ball. the two of them have been pretty much inseparable. On going to bed I joked with him about how you rub the ball on your pants. He said "yes but you have to lick it or it doesn't w...
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Here is today's column in the Fin - in which I try to outline some ideas for a 'post financial crisis' economy not just for their own sake, but also as illustrations of the kinds of principles that should lead us as we craft the contours of the mixed economy. If there's one th...
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The spirit of 1974: Man on Wire This is the most enjoyable documentary I ever watched. Andrew Denton's program on Philippe Petit contained quite a bit of the footage, but even if you saw that, you should still see the film. (And, whether or not you've seen or intend seeing the...
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This interview from The Daily Show is a few days old, and probably nothing new to Troppo's tuned-in readers. But it's too delightful to let anyone miss. John Stewart: Are you concerned, in some respects, that you may go in the voting booth, and your white half will suddenly de...
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