The IMF states the obvious (pdf) - even if we've not yet fully taken it on board. First, and quite simply, governments should make sure that existing programs are not cut for lack of resources. In particular, central governments or sub-national governments that are facing bala...
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Although people endlessly ask for predictions, they rarely really want the answers. It was only late too late in life that I realised that when people said, We really want you to challenge our ideas, they mostly did not. They wanted instead to be congratulated on their wisdom....
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After uncomplainingly sitting through two episodes of Brideshead Revisited earlier this evening (even, I confess, with a degree of appreciation I didn't feel on first viewing 25 years ago), the prospect of backing up for Mansfield Park was a bridge too far, despite the lusciou...
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Time for a bit of economic navel gazing. What does the global financial crisis mean for the state of economics in the early part of the twenty first century? Pass? Conceded Pass? Fail? Well at the end of 2008, for all the talk of the search for stability from economists we sti...
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I feel quite angry with Pope Benedict message that "saving homosexual or transsexual behaviour was as important as protecting the enviornment" and that "God's creation was about protecting man from himself". Even some of my own grand children, who are devoted catholics, feel t...
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Nostalgia. It just gets better with age .
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Well, even reading against the grain of MSM reporting , the Archbishop of Canterbury seems to be throwing caution and Godwin's Law to the winds auditioning for the role of turkey this Christmas. Dr Rowan Williams risks causing a new controversy by inviting a comparison between...
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I've previously written - at least a couple of times - so I was interested to see this post from Greg Mankiw who sent a request from a reader seeking advice on good international development charities to development economist Michael Kremer. The strongest candidate in his lett...
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From 3Quarksdaily for which I think Ingolf for telling us about, a great article on Obama which in one way is far from starry eyed about him and his political methods, but ends in what can only be called a fantasy on the theme that the presidency is just a stepping stone to bi...
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In the days before the Americans turned him into a cuddly economic stimulus package, Santa led a much more exciting life. Today he lets even the naughtiest children sit on his lap and demand Nintendos, ipods and mobile phones. He listens politely and promises to do what he can...
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No real surprises here! (pdf) Abstract: Cross-culturally, male economic power is directly related to reproductive success. Displays of wealth and social status are an important part of human male mating effort. The degree of male financial consumption may be related to varianc...
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Guest postlet by Troppodillian Paul Hobson. This week news of the death of an Australian serving with the British forces in Afghanistan came as Kevin Rudd visited Australian troops. As Britain prepares to withdraw its troops from Iraq, Simon Jenkins asked in the Guardian why a...
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When this was written for ABC Unleashed in June] the ALP ruled in Canberra and in all the states and territories, not necessarily wisely and well, but in some cases by wide margins. The situation in mid 1965 was very different. Menzies had been the PM for as long as many peopl...
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Since I lived in a group house with him, I've stayed in touch with David Evans and discussed various issues - mostly economic - via email with him. As a result I get the odd group email from him setting out his views on greenhouse in which he argues that an ETS is a stupid ide...
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Architecture of the Heart No's 1, 2 and 3. For more follow this link.
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Henry Blodget was a Merrill Lynch tech analyst during the tech bubble. A bubble he rode to fame and then to a Spitzer investigation and oblivion. In this piece in the Atlantic he gives a great analysis of what he thinks caused the current housing and debt bubble and draws the...
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I suggested Governments should be countercyclical investors in asset markets in a speech in 2002 (pdf) and now smarter people than me think it's a good idea. Like Nobel Prize winner Michael Spence and John Muellbauer of Oxford Uni and Martin Wolf who references the other two....
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The RBA minutes confirm two things that were discussed in the press at the time of their last meeting. It was on the 2nd Dec (that is a few months after it had become apparent that the world was facing the greatest financial crisis since the great depression and that the devel...
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It always seemed to me that it was hard to think of anything more Australian than having a long weekend for Anzac Day, or not putting one's hand on one's heart during the playing of the national anthem. But it's all changing and not only are the odd hands going on hearts, but...
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Today's Fin op ed follows up on some of the aspects of the fiscal stimulus that a bunch of us economists proposed the weekend before last. Do it now or pay the price In the 1980s Joe visited George, who had a temporary appointment in India. A last minute snafu when Joe was lea...
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Read all about it here , or over the fold. The US Naval Observatory operates 70 cesium atomic clocks. Credit: USNO If you ever feel like you need more time, here's some great news: you're actually going to get it. On December 31, 2008 a leap second will be added to the worlds...
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The one thing most people now agree on is that this global financial crisis is exactly that, that it is a crisis. It is very serious, historically significant in its size, global in its reach and at a time when countries are more vulnerable to global problems than ever before,...
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Time for more reflections on the financial crisis, starting with seeing whether my predictions of two months ago have come true, followed by observations on a new set of unexpected twists, and rounded off by a set of policy recommendations for how to reduce the severity of the...
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It's good to have the apology out of the way. It was such a horrible distraction, the failure to apologise such a monumental act of ungenerosity. Nevertheless, and despite its frequent tendentiousness, and despite its ridiculous lumping together of apologies to Muslims for the...
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What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum? The barbarians are due here today. Why isn't anything going on in the senate? Why are the senators sitting there without legislating? Because the barbarians are coming today. What's the point of senators making laws now? Once th...
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Warren Buffett emailed this note to the directors of his company, Berkshire Hathaway on Tuesday after he heard that the U.S. Treasury sold $32 billion in 4-week bills at a yield of 0%: This should be bullish for Berkshire. With great foresight, I long ago entered the mattress...
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Qinghua Pei is being investigated by ICAC for allegedly trying to bribe a Year 5 teacher to write a favourable report on his son, and improve the boy's prospects of getting into a selective high school. What is the appropriate reaction to this? Here are a few to choose from: 1...
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A wry look at the arguments that are mounted to defend the bailout of the US car industry. Strictly speaking, a part of the US car industry that is failing, not the robust part that is doing OK. "Too big, too important to lose". The same could have been said of the US piano in...
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HT: Slate, via Paul Krugman
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One of the things George Akerlof was thinking about as he wrote his famous paper on the market for lemons was the market for low skilled labour. The idea that lemons avoidance is a big part of the story of poor demand for low skilled workers has always struck me as very powerf...
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In a world rapidly sinking into a grand funk, with nothing going right for overpaid CEOs, for US Auto workers, for the climate, for climate scientists, for denialists, for the US (apart from Obama), for the sales of SUVs and large cars, for the US, UK and Europe, for Afghanist...
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Well, kind of. I'm on his list of people who receive his Christmas e-mail complete with his speech to the Australian Business Economists Annual Forecasting Conference in Sydney on December 9, 2008. It's below the fold. AUSTRALIA S OUTLOOK FOR POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT IN 2009 Ac...
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UPDATE, 24 December: Many thanks for the nominations so far. We have enough to get started on, but would love to double the number. Therefore, we're extending the deadline to 10 January! But please post your nominations sooner rather than later, so we can get on with the judgi...
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One of the recommendations that I think of as most important in the Review of the National Innovation System is one that will cost next to nothing. As a result, it costs next to nothing. We spent a fair bit of our time focusing on the question of how we could accellerate innov...
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Sara Macliver ....the best Pinchgut ever! I didn't really expect it to be. Though I admired their courage in picking such an obscure and, at first blush unsuitable, work, it seemd inconceivable that it would be as rapturously beautiful as, say, L'Orfeo or The Fairy Queen . But...
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I offer no guarantees as to the accuracy of this article by Bill Ayres the 'unrepentant terrorist' whom Obama was supposed to be 'palling around with' , but I thought it was interesting and others might like to check it out.
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Some interesting pieces in The Australian Literary Review , 3 Dec, the insert that comes in the paper on the first Wednesday of the month. Richard Lansdowne wrote on the courage of Alexander Solzhenitsyn which he suggests made him the greatest writer of the 20th century. I am...
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This diagram is a scatter plot of lagging PE ratios against subsequent market performance. Amongst other things it demonstrates the wisdom in hindsight of Alan Greenspan's first warning about 'irrational exhuberance' which his subsequent utterances seemed to repudiate. Real re...
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Ben Bernanke and Paul Kruman have written on the dangers of deflation and the implicit importance of some level of inflation. Generally this has been in the context of dealing with a liquidity trap. Ken Rogoff has a different angle suggesting that "a sudden burst of moderate i...
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Here's an open letter to the Prime Minister proposing further stimulatory measures by the following signatories which is receiving some coverage today. Tony Cole, Saul Eslake, Allan Fels, Rod Glover, Nicholas Gruen, Ian Harper, Tony Harris, Mike Waller Dear Prime Minister, We...
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A good while back I put up a post on all the ways I liked Platinum Capital . I hope some of you were suitably convinced to have invested. Just as Kier Neilson (the firm's founder) made his name in the 1987 crash, this is how Platinum international fund has performed recently....
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I'm not always in favour of the kind of argument defended here - it all depends on context, intent and, as the author says, whether it's offered as the start or the end of a conversation - but the case for this style of argument is well put by Chris Dillow at Stumbling and Mum...
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"La Somme le roy", circa 1300, via Wikipedia I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; very pleasant have you been to me; your love to me was extraordinary, surpassing the love of women. 2 Samuel 1:26 (English Standard Version) What better definition could you ask for of '...
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In a fit of what some Troppodillians will now know to be rather typical hot headed enthusiasm, I recently pontificated about the best blog post I'd seen in the year . Well it has a sequel , which is also worth reading. And I laughed out loud when I got to this part of the argu...
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Civilization and the evolution of short sighted agents , Date: 2008-11-19 By: Basuchoudhary, Atin Allen, Sam Siemers, Troy We model an assurance game played within a population with two types of individuals -- short-sighted and foresighted. Foresighted people have a lower disc...
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Today's column in the Fin. There are three arms of macroeconomic policy. There are the two in the economics textbooks monetary and fiscal. And theres a third, Australian, arm of macroeconomic policy, or there could be with a bit of lateral thinking of which more in a moment. T...
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Thank you, Rafe, for sending me the October 8 article by Ergas. There is also a new article in todays Australia -- http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,24730487-7583,00.html?from=public_rss I was originally looking for hard evidence - that Kevin Rudd is alleged to hav...
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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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Jacques Barzun is arguably the leading commentator on education and cultural studies in the 20th century but he has a low profile since his kind of deep but ideologically disinterested scholarship went out of fashion. Born in 1907, he turns 101 in November. His reputation achi...
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Comedian laureate of our bullshit drenched age, John Clarke is on LNL tonight. I love John Clarke and, on consulting others in charge of this website - including Dr Troppo - it has been decreed that tuning in is compulsory. Those who are unable to pass a comprehension test (to...
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From today's Fin. Several causes of the financial troubles in the United States - including the non-recourse nature of housing loans - were known to be problems before the crisis erupted. Other factors - such as falls in American house prices - were foreseeable. These weakness...
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The original policy, as announced on 13 October, stated unambiguously that to ensure that taxpayers are not disadvantaged by this guarantee, the Australian Government will charge financial institutions for providing the guarantee. The charge will be similar to an insurance pre...
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Have you noticed that 'masterclasses' have become one of the latest victims of linquistic inflation. I recently got this invitation out of the blue and into my email inbox. I know the esteem in which I am held by some in the blogging community - so I guess it was only a matter...
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A few weeks ago, on the 30th of Sept to be precise, I gave a speech to 'science leaders' in CSIRO. Science leaders are early mid career scientists from around the world whom CSIRO have recruited. As the speech explains, Jim Peacock, the Chief Scientist whom I met when on the I...
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A recent report by Paul Krugman warned that we are about to witness the mother of all currency crises in emerging markets. http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2008/10/is-a-currency-c.html He says emerging markets are "being swept under by a currency crisis that is...
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In one of my interesting adventures in the markets, over ten years ago, I discovered a little fund being run out of Crows Nest in Sydney. It was called Grinham Managed Futures. I was looking to invest a bit of money in alternative investments that didn't correlate with other m...
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Meet Nikita McBride. She's the daughter of friends of mine - Ken McBryde and Stephanie Smith who are the co-founders of the wonderful architecture firm Innovarchi . Nikita has recently been diagnosed with juvenile diabetes type 1. In January 2009 she's participating in the Juv...
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Every night while we sleep, the Wealth Fairy flits from home to home stuffing riches into the magical savings accounts Australians call 'housing equity'. In the morning, newly renovated kitchens buzz with activity as mums and dads get the kids off to school. Coffee mugs clink...
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And if you tell them that Troppo sent you you can have as many books you want for free. (Note: you may be required to perform the Troppodillian secret handshake.)
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The new OECD report on income inequality and rising poverty in most OECD countries is just out. This is the conclusion. Social mobility is lower in countries with high inequality, such as Italy, the UK and USA, and higher in the Nordic countries where income is distributed mor...
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I gave a talk on Australia and the financial crisis today in Adelaide and, in preparation went over a speech Ric Simes and I gave to a conference that Ric organised for which Australians should be ever grateful to Ric. At a time when the now ex-Treasurer was basking in the joy...
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by Edward L. Glaeser, Matthew G. Resseger, Kristina Tobio - #14419 (PE) Abstract: What impact does inequality have on metropolitan areas? Crime rates are higher in places with more inequality, and people in unequal cities are more likely to say that they are unhappy. There is...
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In light of the massive interventionism that is being practiced by governments to handle the financial crisis, a warning needs to be repeated regarding two very different kinds of government action. The warning can be found in Chapter 17 of The Open Society and its Enemies , s...
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Last week I was privileged enough to go to the PM's Science Awards in Parliament House. Kevin was, as usual enjoying his place in the centre of the stage, and gave a good speech which impressed his audience. But the highlight was the scientists. Just five got awards - two were...
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There are important lessons to be learned from the Great Depression but I have the impression that the left emerged with the view that the New Deal was required to save the US from rampant capitalism. There is an alternative account . For an MP3 version of the story . The New...
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The Myer Foundation's 'Cranlana' Program is named after Sidney Myer's magnificent Toorak home where the program holds a range of functions. I attended one of these when I was working at the BCA. I remember doing the reading for it before hand and thinking it was going to be aw...
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From today's AFR column. Go early, go hard, go households. This slogan, coined by Treasury Secretary Ken Henry in discussions on the fiscal stimulus takes me back. To another time long, long ago. Flashbacks are better suited to the silver screen than newspaper columns, but ima...
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When debating this issue, John Quiggin ( September 27, 2008 ) made the claim that neo-liberalism had failed (relative to social democracy). Paul Frijters ( recent Club Troppo piece ), on the other hand, dismisses the topic as largely irrelevant. One reason for this disagreemen...
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"Goodbye and f.... you!" A hemp-inspired comment maybe? This came out of the farewell letter from Andrew Lahde, manager of a small California hedge fund, Lahde Capital, which recentlyreturned 866 percent betting against the subprime collapse. He has retired to live the good li...
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The Australian Skeptics Prize for Critical Thinking has been won this year by Peter Ellerton, a Queensland teacher who established a network promoting critical thinking in schools. The prize is worth $10,000. For a decade up to 2006 it was awarded as a part of the Australian M...
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(Written in response to a question from an ANZ customer, who sent me a copy of an open letter to Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director of the IMF, from Martin Weiss, Chairman of the Sound Dollar Committee, urging him to resist government interventions in the financial syst...
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I was sufficiently taken with this piece in the Fin that I asked it's author Peter Cebon of the Melbourne Uni Business School if I could republish it here. Were told that the root cause of the current financial crisis is a few regional financiers selling dodgy mortgages to poo...
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It has been a busy time for academic economists in the past few weeks. Every lunch break has been dominated by talk about all the goings on in the markets and the government plans that are coming thick and thin. We are trying desperately to remain more knowledgeable about the...
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This is an invite to an exhibition at the Jewish Museum by someone who is pondering his roots as a descendant of those who experienced the holocaust. I was sent it as someone on the Dunera News mailing list. I think about this myself, not so much in relation to myself, but rat...
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[caption id="attachment_6120" align="alignleft" width="330" caption="Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan leaves the Treasury Building. Courtesy Bloomberg"] [/caption] It doesn't get any easier to give this administration the benefit of the doubt. For a fleeting moment in recent days, it...
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From the Universe Today website. The Cassini mission has released some of the most detailed images of Saturn's poles yet, revealing vast cyclones churning up the gas giant's atmosphere in the north and south. These observations show very similar storms to the south pole observ...
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My take on Krugman's Nobel - from today's Crikey! And there's lots of other views around the blogosphere, not all of whose I've read. Joshua had Krugman as a teacher and his post is a goodie - make sure you read Krugman's interstellar trade theory. Because I don't think I can...
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Though it's late the day, I want to recommend Opera Australia's production of Billy Budd . There are only two performances left -- tonight (Monday 13 October) and Thursday. This is indeed short notice for tonight but, for the spontaneous among you, tickets are only $60 if you...
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Courtesy of a friend Paul, here is an email I received of neologisms from the neologism competition in the Washington Post. Once again, The Washington Post has published the winning submissions to its yearly neologism contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate mea...
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It's long seemed obvious to me that without large injections of fresh capital, all the other efforts to deal with the ever unfolding financial crisis would prove inadequate. Or even counterproductive . The official debate has finally swung in this direction but the question of...
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People will recall that political economy started out as moral philosophy (a la Adam Smith, Professor of Moral Philosophy) then evolved into the study of national economies, then reverted to the narrower scope of economics, focussed on the idealised "economic actor". For those...
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Regular readers of this blog may remember Neil, the guy who runs a great taxi 'ring' - a group of drivers who cooperate in providing a superior service to the crap you have to put up with from the branded networks of taxis. I really hate their policy of not offering you any id...
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A subject that has mystified me as it's mystified pretty much everyone. I've always guessed he felt it was the best he could get out of Paulson with whom he had to come up with a joint plan. That's what Steve Randy Waldman thinks too - though he suggests a bit more detail - ov...
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I was reading this post by a favourite lefty last night and getting pretty depressed at the US's massively greater propensity for hysteria than our own political culture - maybe it goes back to the witch trials in Salem, or perhaps the madness the South pre and post Civil War...
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I went to see the film The Dutchess the other night about Georgiana Dutchess of Devonshire Tea (In the film they pronounce her name Georgaina in case you care). I didn't expect much but just wanted to see a movie and knew that if it was awful the costumes would be just fine. A...
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Someone who used to do some 'spot' research assistance for Lateral Economics has got a new job which means he can no longer do it. Anyone interested in doing occasional research assistasnce should drop me an email at ngruen AT lateraleconomics DOT com and after that add a DOT...
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On this analysis two major factors in the train wreck were the regulations that pushed lenders to water down prudent criteria for lending and the flight of speculators from the housing market when prices ceased to rise. A nuance in this analysis is to point out that it was not...
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A companion site to the 200 years of Australian technology, " Bright Sparcs ", hosted by the University of Melbourne. A register of people involved in the development of science, technology, engineering and medicine in Australia, including references to their archival material...
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I recently received an offer to buy some David Jones shares of mine - bought for the discount that I think they're in the process of phasing out. The offer is to buy the shares for $2.04 per share when their market value - at the time the letter was sent was $4.08. All this is...
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Fortunately executives of 'rescued' outfits realise how important it is for them to reassure the rest of us by showing us that life goes on and we should continue to lead it (as best we can in our newly straitened circumstances) as usual. Thus for instance the Washington Post...
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[caption id="attachment_6021" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Clearwater, Fla (6th October)"] [/caption] Conservative commentators* piled on after the vice presidential debate last week. Greg Sheridan made no attempt to hide his pleasure: "Sarah Palin, the pitbull in li...
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Here's today's AFR column. No pain no gain. Were all familiar with the cliché. Meet its twisted sister. Courting the pundits respect for taking tough decisions, our politicians simply make the economy worse. Call it all pain, no gain. In the next few weeks the Federal Governme...
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The Henson episode has raised some questions about the role of art and artists that Jacques Barzun addressed in his book The Use and Abuse of A rt. Barzun (1907 - ) turned 100 last year and deserves to be better known as arguably the premier scholar in cultural studies in the...
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I'm thinking about Aussie Mac again. The Federal Government has been led to water but only wants a sip - it's investing $4 billion of its surplus in buying mortgages when the credit that was taken out by the collapse of the residential mortgage backed securities market was aro...
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From last Tuesday's Financial Review: The Oppositions proposal for a $30 a week boost to the single age pension has not died, let alone been cremated. To avoid more political embarrassment, the government will grant an expensive pension increase before the next election. The a...
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On the weekend the ABC News reported on the excitement about Bill Henson being given permission by a primary school principal to trawl for photography models. The news then covered the various photo ops put on by Kevin and Malcolm telling us how disgusted they were. (Malcolm w...
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From The Melbourne Age on 1st October 2008 Monday nights rejection by the US House of Representatives of the US Treasury Secretary Paulsons Troubled Assets Recovery Plan, which had been modified to accommodate the concerns of Congressional leaders, has propelled the financial...
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Getting back to the basic things that really matter. If the Manly Seaeagles are to fulfull their promise as the favorites for this event, and defeat the reigning champions, the Melbourne Storm, the Manly pivot Jamie Lyon holds the key due to his responsibilities in both defenc...
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For people who have the time or the need to get into the details of the proposed bailout package, this link provides a section by section summary of the bill. Given the size of the bill, something like this is the only way that most people will ever get a glimpse of the mechan...
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Paul Krugman, the op ed maestro has another great column for us all. But I must say the first commenter on the column stole the show. Joe Idaho says... I like McCain. I think he has a strong understanding of the issues, and that he is a strong leader who will lead us towards p...
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Here is Pundit Grattan thinking aloud about government spending. Meanwhile, it is a bit rash, with revenue uncertain, to be talking up expectations on spending, as Rudd did this week when he said it was time to "bite the bullet" on a paid maternity scheme, "and we intend to do...
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The recent post on architectural delights reminded me that during the Beaconsfield mining disaster I googled Beaconsfield and turned up some pictures of the Batman Bridge nearby. That led to some more pictures of Tasmanian bridges and one of them led to some other bridges in V...
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When I was a boy growing up in Sydney - and this is the 60s we're talking about here - I often spent school holidays at my grandmother's house in the western suburbs. Generally speaking, it wasn't much fun. My grandmother never had any money. There was a box on the wall out th...
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In the USA, Lawrence Summers tells us that the case for a fiscal stimulus is stronger than at any time in my professional lifetime. And most people other than a few crazy republicans agree with him. Paul Krugman and Greg Mankiw both add their voice: counter-cyclical measures a...
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In a recent post , Rafe quoted Frank Shostak as one of the dissenters who are critical of the bailout proposal, not only in its particulars, but in principle. Shostak sees all interventions of this kind as economically damaging as well as adding to the already existing mountai...
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Some of the things reported in this post may not be true. But how many Troppodillians can put their hands on their hearts (well that's tricky in itself if taken literally but you know what I mean) and say that if there was as much half way credible dirt flying around on Obama...
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It is hard for us, without being flippant, to even see a scenario within any kind of realm of reason that would see us losing one dollar in any of those transactions" Joseph J. Cassano, former AIG executive, who was in charge of the AIG credit default swaps (CDS) operation. Me...
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The way the proposed bailout is being talked up, you get the impression that the whole world depends on the Bush administration and the Fed coming to the party with the best part of a trillion dollars. The US economy depends on it, our economy depends on it, the capacity of th...
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HT Mark Thoma : via Justin Fox (and I note with weeping gratitude the pundit's confession that he doesn't know enough to pass any decent judgement on the arguments). Me too. Australian money manager John Hempton owned Washington Mutual preferred shares and was thus wiped out w...
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A few weeks ago I spent an afternoon in the Victorian Parliament building discussing regulation and, though I think I've looked in it quickly before, I was completely blown away by how magnificent the Legislative Council is. I mean just take a look at those pictures. And it re...
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From Universe Today , here's the Wednesday quiz. It's time for another "Where In The Universe" (WITU) challenge to test your visual knowledge of the cosmos. This one might be relatively easy, but I'm feeling generous today. Guess what this image is, and give yourself extra poi...
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Whatever that is. Anyway, John Quiggin is salivating at the implications of the current schemozzle for 'neoliberalism'. It's finished he reckons. So too the 'Washington Consensus'. I have my doubts. I guess some of the worst excesses of this time around will be a cause for les...
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Gary Linnell in today's Daily Telegraph asserts that debate about capital punishment is taboo in Australia, a claim which is rather negated by the fact that his own death penalty advocacy is carried not only in the Tele but on Australia's mostly widely read online news site an...
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This post is an illustration of why I find Krugman just soooo good. He will probably get the Nobel Prize at some stage, but he'll get it for a bunch of silly stuff he did which was called, at the time 'Strategic Trade Theory' and which he has since conceded wasn't worth much m...
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The US election and the biggest financial swindle of all time (OK - I exaggerate, TARP is not a swindle, it's a really really inefficient and unfair way of doing something sensible, but perhaps as we speak the Congress are making it better) have got me in one of those times wh...
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From an interview on CNBC . I've argued this kind of thing myself - here (pdf). BUFFETT: What you have, Joe, you have all the major institutions in the world trying to deleverage. And we want them to deleverage, but they're trying to deleverage at the same time. Well, if huge...
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Courtesy of Dani Rodrik's blog . Our Center for International Development launched its new Empowerment Lab with a conference yesterday, and one of the most interesting new social entrepreneurship initiatives I learned about is something called MyC4.com . This is a web-based pl...
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In view of the current financial crisis it may be interesting to revisit the work of Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) . His first major work in 1912 was on money and credit. A sleeping giant of the 20th century, for many decades he was the spine of the Austrian school of economics...
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There is good piece in The Australian today by Christopher Joye Central Banks arent immune to mistakes. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24397965-7583,00.html He makes three points. First, that the Reserve Bank has consistently under-estimated the severity of...
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We've always had a pretty laissez faire attitude towards commenting at Club Troppo. Contrary to the impressions of some, we have only ever banned two or three persistent trolls, and only ever delete comments that are persistently abusive or defamatory. However, there have been...
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An article of mine - for today's Crikey! It was written yesterday morning and so doesn't consider the latest developments. Thanks to Ingolf for some suggestions. (Which reminds me, on a couple of columns recently, I should have mentioned several people who've helped out includ...
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After the Menzies administration was voted out during World War 2 and the Curtin-led ALP took over there was a suggestion to have a Government of National Unity so the best talent on both sides of the house could be applied directly to the desperate issues at hand. Curtin reje...
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Here's a YouTube of a Keith Olbermann show. KO isn't my favourite kind of guy - a kind of leftish of centre Bill O'Reilly from what I've seen - though nowhere near as obnoxious as BO. Anyway, this has an interesting interview with Paul Krugman but what got my interest is a gra...
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The atmosphere in Washington is all too redolent of 2001. Swept up in the turbulent aftermath of 9/11, legislators were easily stampeded into passing the Patriot Act. F ew, as it turned out, had even read it, much less thought carefully about its implications. [caption id="att...
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From the invariably thoughtful Steve Randy Waldman . Rather than a bail-out, Congress should pass an "ARISE act". ARISE would stand for Automatic Reorganization of Insolvent Systemically-important Enterprises. It could be very simple. The Secretary of the Treasury, in consulta...
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The travails of the financial markets have triggered a degree of jubilation among the usual left-leaning suspects, as though this episode reflects badly on "neoliberalism", deregulation and the free market order. This view is not sustainable because the problems can be traced...
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Statement from Frank Raines released an hour after the ad above was released: "I am not an adviser to Barack Obama, nor have I provided his campaign with advice on housing or economic matters." "This is another flat-out lie from a dishonorable campaign that is increasingly inc...
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How to keep your money safe? Not such an easy question these days. I've had some money piling up in a bank account for my company which runs Lateral Economics and Peach Financial and have just popped down to the bank to pay it from an account heavily in credit to a personal ma...
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Lingua Franca is often a fun show and t omorrow they have someone talking about "the new quotatives" The words like and go when classed as 'new quotatives' have linguistic functions way beyond their traditional meanings. And this phenomenon is not confined to English; it can b...
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From the Fin Column of 19th August. There were so many issues in the last election that you might not have noticed Labors promise to introduce a resale royalty scheme - to provide artists with a share of profits when their art is resold. This is a promise that will soon haunt...
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Just when you were wondering whether we'd ever come through at Pontification Central, over the fold we explain how to fix the financial crisis is explained in full. Well not really. I'm buggered if I know. But this post from Thomas Palley seemed as 'on the money' as any I've s...
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This is light years away whats happening in other banking systems around the world. It is night and day. This is the RBA of Australia discussing our current financial plight. Lets accept that the banks are better safeguarded than the USA (although they may be hit very hard if...
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Hugh Stretton has been a persuasive advocate for the competition-enhancing role of government agencies in the private sector. His example was the South Australian Housing Trust which apparently operated on a commercial basis to provide alternative accommodation in the marketpl...
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Tyler Cowen challenges the idea that the finance markets have failed due to lack of regulation. Not a lack of government intervention , too much, done badly. THERE is a misconception that President Bushs years in office have been characterized by a hands-off approach to regula...
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Steven Long It's hard to escape the irony. Two decades ago, the historian Francis Fukuyama proclaimed the end of history with the triumph of American capitalism. But Socialism, for Wall Street, is alive and well. After the bail-outs AIG, and the mortgage companies Freddie Mac...
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This is one for Don Arthur, maybe you can help to work out where John Gray is coming from these days and what happened since the time he was a fan of Thatcherism and the New Right. Somewhere along the road he decided that he could no longer support liberalism because it provid...
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This is the latest feed from Eddie Cross , a white MP in the MDC party that is now sharing power with Mugabe. Eddie explains how the power-sharing arrangement has a strong resemblance to the traditional governance of the Shona tribe.
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Speaking of that fine subject, this proposal is not exactly audacious ( HT Kathy G ), just a illustration of how Obama might go on the front foot on behalf of issues based politics (as opposed to lipstick based politics) - an illustration of how propitous the times could be fo...
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Nicholas disapproved of Charlie Gibson's 'trick question' to Sarah Palin about the Bush Doctrine. He was especially struck that the question 'was asked by an interviewer who then went on to demonstrate that he didnt know what it was'. The question was only a trick insofar as i...
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Today's column from the Fin. The High Court once declared that governments had only limited powers to withhold information from voters. But a recent judgement effectively means that ministers face no constitutional impediment to keeping government documents from the public eye...
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They look like banks (as they borrow short, are highly leveraged and lend and invest long and in illiquid ways) and thus are highly vulnerable to bank like runs. But unlike banks, they are not properly regulated or supervised and dont have access to deposit insurance or the le...
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The whole of Sept 08 Quadrant . And you have to be a subscriber to look at a limited number of back numbers. Not long ago only selected items were on line in the current edition and there was open access to back numbers extended as far as 2002 or further. WTF? Check out John S...
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There's been a lot of excitement about how terrible the Democrats are being to Sarah Palin and how it's hurting them etc etc. It's all a bit strange. What's strange is that the main guy - Obama - reacted to her appointment in a dignified way. So did Hilary Clinton. But Democra...
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I'm gonna have to cut Obama some slack on that one. I do not think he was referring to Sarah Palin, he didn't reference her. Mike Huckabee McCain's ads have gone one step too far in sort of attributing to Obama things that are, you know, beyond the 100% truth test. Karl Rove I...
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[ republished from today's Northern Territory News ] The political wash-up from the recent coronial inquest into the death of Margaret Winter at Royal Darwin Hospital in December 2006 is proving messy indeed. Claims this week by Health Minister Chris Burns that he was lied to...
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I suppose it isn't surprising that sentiment among media professionals about the future of newspapers is so negative. Fairfax's recent culling of several hundred journos in the face of a collapsing revenue bottom line has brought the whole issue into sharp focus, as have simil...
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Shopping for Christmas? New books from artist and author Kilmeny Niland. Other artworks from the same source - portraits, miniatures, haiga , wildlife, cards. A prolific source of links on every topic under the sun. Australiana , war , the US , queer issues , etc. Peter Klein...
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Congratulations to Andrew Leigh who has scraped onto the list of the top 50 economics blogs. This came as a feed from The Austrian Economists where one of the five bloggers was excited to come in at 38. Marginal Revolution was on the top, followed by Econbrowser and then Paul...
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On reading Margaret Simons classification of blogs I wonder what kind of blog Troppo is. No doubt others have joined in on other blogs. Anyway, she puts Catallaxy, LP and Andrew Norton's blogs in the category of 'pamphleteering' blog. That's interesting because although I woul...
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We already use the opportunities that the web 2.0 world offers a bit, but we could be doing a lot more . For those who haven't seen it yet here is Lindsay Tanner's blog. Worth keeping an eye on I'd say. He's posed a bunch of questions - as follows. Hightail it over there and a...
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The other day I emailed Don Arthur the url to a terrific essay by Martha Nussbaum on Roger Williams . Who is Roger Williams I hear you cry. He was an amazing and wonderful man who founded Rhode Island and who was the first to theorise the merits of radical religious tolerance....
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I find little evidence of any RBA remorse or regret for what it has done to our economy. Although contributing to a very low GDP growth, a shocking malaise in the housing, retail and low-leverage business credit and rises in unemployment, the RBA remains almost complacent. Nor...
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Herewith today's column in the Fin - on a subject as you may gather on reading the column that gets me fired up. Borrowing to invest could be a perfect issue for Labor Governments - suited to their ideology and a battle they could have with their opponents in which they were r...
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Bob Gould on the evolution of revolutionary thought since 1905. Proving that old lefties don't die, they just write a lot. Bob Gould is the sixty-something proprietor of a series of alternative bookshops, starting in Goulburn St (Sydney) and now located in King St, Newtown. He...
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It was just how Don Watson said it should be -- an act of seduction. "A good speech is a lover's embrace," he wrote. "You want to sit on the metaphorical mountain and with an arm sneaking round their shoulder speak of things you have in common -- your love of trees or cows, th...
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Andrew Leigh writes to me and through to me to you gentle Troppodillians: With my ANU colleague Alison Booth, I'm presently doing some research on racial attitudes in Australia. As part of that, Alison and I are hoping to get a sample of Australians to do an Implicit Associati...
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Good news everyone! Refreshed by a spell on the bench I have decided to line up with the Troppo team, or at least alongside the team. The major mission is to keep people up to date with developments in classical liberalism, critical rationalism and Austrian social studies. Jus...
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Blogger Beth Hamburger at the convention reports the comments of the Ambassador to Israel "Do we want to be more like France, Sweden, Denmark and the rest of Europe, with a hands-off policy when it comes to the Middle East, with a neutral love of life ?" Damn those Europeans....
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A column first published in the Fin on the 5th August. In the first days of the new parliament, the Opposition called for three Senate select committees. Its new found passion for accountability was deeply hypocritical: when the Howard government ruled the Senate it made sure...
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Yesterday, Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Governor Sarah Palin, or the Palinator as some of her more excitable fans have taken to calling her, took to the stage in Minnesota to make her pitch. There must have been some trepidation in Republican ranks. She is to most af...
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If you loved The Wisdom of Crowds , easily the best economic bestseller I've read since The Theory of Moral Sentiments and that was published in 1759, you'll lerve this post by Michael Nielsen. Michael himself is quite an achiever. A graduate of the Uni of Queensland, he's not...
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George Osborne gave a surprising speech earlier this month. The Shadow Chancellor spoke about the egalitarian philosopher John Rawls and called for greater equality of opportunity. He praised Swedish educational reforms and argued that parents should be able to choose a school...
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Labor-leaning Sunday Territorian columnist Scott Stirling wrote last week about the challenges facing the CLP Opposition. However, they pale by comparison with the situation faced by the Henderson government. Some are purely political problems in the wake of Labors recent clos...
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From a Fin Review column on 22nd July. The February meeting of the Shellharbour council, on the NSW south coast, was to start at 7.15pm. But the majority of councillors, Labor Party members, refused to assemble until an undesirable left the public gallery. He seemed harmless,...
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Congratulations to Mathew Mitcham - I think I'm right in saying the only out gay guy in the Olympics. Congratulations for his coming through depression, and burnout and coming back and doing so well. Mathew was stoked to be getting silver. Then the guy coming first dived not s...
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"The rich beauty of Dr. James Orbinskis writing contrasts with the stark poverty and suffering of the people he has served. . . . This book exposes truths most of us would rather not know. Do not put it down. . . . See who you become after reading it. Canadian Medical Associat...
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Thanks to Ken Parish for helpful comments and corrections. The high price of justice Nazi Sex Romp! Now Ive got your attention Im going to talk about legal procedure. After the lecture well return to the sex romp. Attorney General Robert McClelland has joined the chorus of con...
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The short answer is that we'd better be able to because as various people of high authority have commented, the current system is unsustainable. Here's story as to why. A costs decision handed down in the NSW Supreme Court in February showed National Australia Bank spent $75 m...
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The recent resignation of former Labor MLA John Bailey and two other members from the Darwin Harbour Advisory Committee raises some important issues. The previous CLP government always had a gung ho attitude towards Darwin development, along with a seeming disregard for indepe...
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I am calling on all Troppodillians to nominate a worse research paper than this . From a very quick squiz the people who wrote the paper are against rape. After an introductory poem the paper begins thus: Women who are raped or who suffer domestic violence are somehow thought...
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It was an innocent age where the major threats to freedom were mustachioed men with hydrogen bombs and the monopolistic tendencies of big business. In the paradoxical world of Clive Hamilton , the free market liberals of the 1950s never realised that the most serious threat to...
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Last weekend I went to see Guys and Dolls. I had no idea it was such a good show. I remember it was on when I was a kid, so I figured it might have been written in the late fifties or early sixties - definitely pre-Beatles or Buddy Holly even if it chronologically coincided wi...
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There have been a bunch of things I've wanted to post about, but have simply not had the time. I still don't have the time, but I with a bit of enthusiasm and not much time, I thought I'd mention some good things. The first is that I listened to this podcast of Dan Pink talkin...
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When Margaret Thatcher said that there was no such thing as society , her enemies were delighted . Here, in a single phrase, was her heartless philosophy of individualism -- a philosophy which abandoned vulnerable people to the competitive violence of the marketplace and celeb...
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I just clicked on Amazon's 'add to my shopping cart' and got told that four books had changed price. Usually they have gone up. Or that's been my experience. But things are a-changing as you can see from the excerpt below. Is this deflation, increasing copying, competition fro...
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From Glen Dyer in today's Crikey. I agree. If you -- or ASIC or the ASX -- are looking for another example of well-informed trading affecting stock prices ahead of stockmarket announcements, look at yesterday's 5.3% drop in the price of construction giant, Leighton Holdings to...
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This started out as a comment on Don's recent post on Hamilton (for which I second or third -- the praise). Totting up the word count when I finally lifted my head, I realised it was an absurdly long piece to tack onto a comments thread. In any case, the points I wanted to tak...
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Here is today's column for the Financial Review. Patently there's a problem As Mark Twain said, It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. Its what you know for sure that just aint so. Our biggest mistakes often come when we're most untroubled by our logic even w...
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Brian Fitzgerald drew my attention to this sad valedictory post at The Patry Copyright Blog . 2. The Current State of Copyright Law is too depressing This leads me to my final reason for closing the blog which is independent of the first reason: my fear that the blog was becom...
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Is the New York Philharmonic just a cover band? After all, rather than writing and performing their own material, aren't they just rehashing old tunes by Mozart, Stravinsky and Beethoven ? One of the conceits of underground music scenes, is that the performers are genuine crea...
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Matthew Bonson and the long-tongued Len Kiely in happier times on elevation to the Ministry in November last year The day before Saturdays unexpectedly knife-edge NT election, Chief Minister Paul Henderson gave a politically prudent and factually correct assessment of Labors c...
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Nothing seems to excite conservatives as much as the spectre of moral relativism. For conservatives, relativism is one of the great errors of the postmodernist left. If it is allowed to spread through the classrooms, lecture theatres and legal system, Western civilization will...
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When the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer threw his neighbour down a flight of stairs he said it was because she was making too much noise. He couldn't stand noise and once wrote that "when a great mind is interrupted, disturbed and distracted it is capable of no more than a co...
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I found this brief excerpt (courtesy 3 Quarks Daily ) hard to resist: If you want to go where people are reading Hannah Arendt and Karl Popper, Nafisi has admonished, go to Iran. Go to Iran, I would add, if you want to discover where people are reading Jürgen Habermas, Isaiah...
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Here's a nice looking painting what I got sent in my email - having once subscribed to the email list of the Rex Irwin Gallery which is holding an exhition of this guy from the 12th August. I'll be in the wrong city, but they look like nice paintings. Check out details here .
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George Kahn, 1948-2008 In late 1987, a group of 30 Australians traveled to Nicaragua to pick coffee in solidarity with the Sandinista revolution. On Christmas Day, as we waited at the airport in Mexico for our flight to Managua, we were joined by a tall, easy-going, laconic, 3...
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I went to a fascinating talk by Gregory Clark last night at the Melbourne Business School. As I often do - and as I often do wrongly - I had taken his book to be one of those best seller books which announce a few new interesting ideas that have been explored in an article of...
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This article by Stephen Bartos first appeared in the Public Sector Informant magazine, published with the Canberra Times today. This version has been slightly edited, primarily to include links. Government Information It was two steps forward, one back for access to government...
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This semester I'm teaching an elective unit in Cyberspace Law at CDU. Research and preparation for it has been another of the reasons for the delayed reappearance of Missing Link. However, it's also involved a certain amount of fun. In the first online tutorial last week, we h...
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Having already explained to Troppodillians some of the terminal shortcomings in Optus's wireless broadband service to me, I'm afraid things have not improved. Several rogue charges turned up on the statement that coincided with my taking out the wireless broadband account to t...
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One of the numerous tasks that's been distracting me from resuming Missing Link over the last couple of weeks is doing promotion/marketing for Jen's Missing Link Theatre production of Edward Albee's The Zoo Story , playing next week in Darwin (I stole the name of the blog revi...
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New from the NBER : One of the advantages of going to a good college in the US - over the fold. "Among managers with the strongest connection to senior officials (same school at the same time with the same degree), the connected holdings earned an average annual 16.05 percent...
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A nice morning with the Age yielded two good op eds which I link to here in case you're interested. I'm thrilled the cruel and unusual way we had of welcoming boat people has been ended by the new Minister for Immigration who, though I've not been watching closely, seems to sa...
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What a lot of nonsense has been talked about the defection to French rugby of rugby league star Bobby Sue Billy Jo Sonny Bill Williams! First, the NRL isn't going to succeed in getting an injunction to restrain Sonny Bill's defection, still less get a French court to enforce i...
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Would you find lots of oval shaped stations popping up all over the place in your city an eyesore? And they have advertising on them. Still, I reckon you wouldn't. You see they're bike exchange stations and in Paris they've got them every 300 metres or so. And I just know that...
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The High Court's decision earlier today in the Blue Mud Bay case sets the cat among the pigeons (or maybe the shark among the barramundi) a little over a week out from the Northern Territory election. The Court has dismissed the NT Labor government's appeal from a decision of...
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Fresh from Krugman's blog . As usual, it can't be put much better. Economics of catastrophe Away from the headlines, theres a really important discussion going on about how to think about the economics of climate change. The key player is Marty Weitzman, who has made a simple...
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Here's today's column in the Financial Review. The interface between you and your bank used to be the branch. Today banks give your computer sufficient access to their computer over the net to let you do it all yourself. Reengineering of the interface is happening everywhere a...
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I realise this is kind of missing the main news story in the recent court victory of Max Mosley - son of Oswald who was the leader of the British Union of Fascists. (That's not to say that Max should automatically be tarred with the same brush, but he does seem to dip into tha...
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Via Beth Simone Noveck , Amex has got into the crowdsourcing game announcing an exciting and innovative philanthropic program Members Project in which you can propose projects, vote on the projects of others, and in so doing qualify them for $2.5 million of funding from Amex....
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I'm a fan of 'synergies' in policy - doing more than one thing you want done with one policy. Killing two birds, that kind of thing. These opportunities come up all the time, but we're very often too flat footed to catch them. The last time Australia was good at this kind of t...
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Am I the only newspaper reader who expects an opinion column to develop a coherent thread of argumentation, as distinct from a series of provocative comments stuck together precariously with specious howevers and therefores? The editors who approve these pieces evidently think...
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Everyone knows that egalitarians believe in equality . But what does that mean? If the core egalitarian idea is that all human beings have equal moral worth, then even Friedrich Hayek is an egalitarian . But if, as Rafe Champion insists , egalitarianism means "equal material r...
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I gather this YouTube is quite well known. I'd never seen it when I came across it.
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Andrew Bolt admonishes abusive foam flecked greens for their reaction to a grim metaphor and contrasts the obsession with AGW with a lack of concern about the coarsening of our culture. A moderator has just told me half a dozen spectacularly nasty comments have had to be snipp...
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This is really something IMO, but if you want an eerie and remarkable experience, just left click on this 1 minute movie to download it and travel in silence with Cassini around Saturn. Awesome. PS: well you'll 'left click' if you use your left hand to operate your mouse like...
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Why are left-wingers less happy than right-wingers? According to psychologists Jaime Napier and John Jost , it's because of the way they interpret inequality. American right-wingers are more likely to believe that hard work leads to success. As a result, they find inequality l...
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Well no doubt others have posted this around the traps, but Tim Watts posted this truly spooky argument for the existence of God. You might think the arguments are obvious, but that's always the case once things are pointed out.
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Read this (reproduced below the fold). Should taxpayers bail out the banking system? One of the worlds leading international macroeconomists contrasts the Larry Summers dont-scare-off-the-investors pro-bailout view with the Willem Buiter they-ran-into-a wall-with-eyes-wide-ope...
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Support for the welfare state is often based more on chauvinism than a desire for justice, says Will Wilkinson. He argues that if first-worlders really care about improving the lot of the poor we should open up our economies to trade and allow more poor foreigners to cross our...
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I'm sick of paying $100 or more every time I crank through two or three thousand pages of printing. Back in the old days, printer drums and toner cartridges were replaced separately. Drums lasted 20,000 pages or more and could be persevered with even if they weren't giving you...
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"Over the past five years, a group of young and unpredictable rightward-leaning writers has emerged on the scene", writes David Brooks in the New York Times . Instead of rising through the official channels of the movement, he says, "they found their voices while blogging. The...
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Dilbert is running mashups , many of which are less funny than the usual. IMHO the one above is an exception.
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Help! My insanity level is increasing. I've just written another letter to the editor of the Northern Territory News : Its understandable when political flacks and criminal lawyer advocates exaggerate the extent of crime in the Territory. Its both disappointing and puzzling wh...
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From the 'being grateful for small mercies department, and from this website , here is extrasolar planet HD 209458b (also unofficially known as "Osiris", which orbits a star in the constellation of Pegasus) revealed the strongest ever spectroscopic signature for a giant extras...
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From Paul Krugman Its just a glancing mention in this Times piece on how Fannie Mae won friends and influenced people: Fannies board once included Frederic V. Malek, a longtime friend of the Bush family and a former business partner of the current President Bush. Theres a bit...
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Brilliant! HT: Peter Martin .
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Verily this is a cool new development. Boeing is building super airships to double the capacity that can be airlifted around the world. These babys will be the size of football fields (not ours but America's) and fitted with four helicopter rotors and able to drag 40 tons of s...
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I couldn't believe my ears today when I heard The Queensland Police Minister, Judy Spence interviewed about the paedophile who is living in the semi-rural town of Carbrook on Breakfast on ABC Radio National. As you no doubt know, there's a baying mob there right now. I might b...
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I've made various suggestions about the possible terrificness of open source approaches to government, for instance here . The Poms are having a crack at this kind of thing. They're trying to use suggestion boxes to improve policy. Thus the front page of betterregulation.gov.u...
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Catherine Carby, Rachelle Durkin and Gábor Bretz If one wants uniformity to be the basic rule for an opera, it is easy to see that a more perfect subject ... than 'Don Giovanni' is simply not to be contemplated. (Source) Was Kierkegaard right about this opera being the greates...
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And exciting presentation of fascinating data. Hat tip to a Troppodillian whose email I have now lost but who emailed me a week or so ago suggesting I watch this and write it up on Troppo. Apologies, this isn't much of a write up, but I'm afraid I'm flat out. And I didn't thin...
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Government and the private sector are good at different things, and there are gains from trade. Thus government has certain assets at its disposal. One of those assets is the taxing power. That asset should be 'worked' wherever it gives rise to value. Bruce Chapman has spend a...
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Since I posted this post on my problems with my wireless broadband, I've received constant emails from around the Tropposphere on how I am going with the problem, begging for a sequel. Well folks, I can report the next exciting episode is that I contacted Optus at the end of m...
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This article by Charles Krauthammer seems cruel but fair to me. Obama is pursuing a 'small target' strategy against his opponents. John Howard did this - and Kevin Rudd. But Obama has an additional reason to do it on top of the fact that the incumbent is on the nose - he's a c...
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Superstar CEOs by Ulrike Malmendier, Geoffrey Tate - #14140 (CF LE LS) Abstract: Sounds right. From the NBER's latest research . Compensation, status, and press coverage of managers in the U.S. follow a highly skewed distribution: a small number of 'superstars' enjoy the bulk...
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Robbie Deans' tweaked team lineup for the upcoming second rugby test against France seems pretty sound to me. Neither speedster Lachie Turner for the injured Tuqiri nor Stephen Hoiles for Wycliff Palu will weaken the team, and Turner might even add desirable speed on the flank...
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From this site , via Kathy G , regarding Charlie Chaplin. They were dreadfully poor. Charlie's parents were third-string strolling players. His father died early of alcoholism; his mother was often in asylums, whether through drink or because of periodic mental illness. Whenev...
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Toyota Prius - not as green as it seems, but the forthcoming "plug-in" one might be If there's a certain bet flowing from last weekend's Gippsland by-election result, it's the proposition that any inclusion of petrol in Labor's emissions trading scheme will be carefully struct...
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In an interesting post a day or so ago Ken Parish made this claim, which went largely unchallenged (though I've not read all the comments). The need to avoid stifling innovation as the primary engine of capitalisms remarkable success was Hayeks principal answer to those who ar...
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With the departure of Andrew Leigh from the blogosphere and from the AFR, the AFR have asked me to step into his outsize shoes. So I've got a fortnightly column for six months. That suits me very well, as once a week can be a bit taxing after a while. And I think all columnist...
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Gummo is sick, Amanda doesn't have computer access at the moment, Jen is under the hammer to finish assignments for her Masters, and I'm not sure where Stephen Hill and Tim Sterne are (flat out looking for a job in Tim's case, I suspect). Gilmae is going on a holiday soon and...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian Nationals bitch slap ALP and LP in Gippsland . Ralph Buttigieg finds good news for Bren...
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Who knows if this speculation is true, but it gives me a thrill the way the human mind can deduce things so far from its immediate knowledge by a process of inference and deduction. Just like we can know things about the universe and about what goes on inside atoms from the ti...
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Many years ago, Robert M. Pirsig's hippy cult novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was one of my favourites. A few weeks ago I discovered he'd written a sequel in 1991 called Lila: An Inquiry into Morals . I've been reading it as a break from seemingly interminable...
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While some members of the Missing Link team have subscribed their selections and others have done so partially, others (where are you arts people?) haven't done so at all. They're no doubt as flat out as I am with work commitments. In my case it's finishing exam and essay mark...
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Barry Jones is a human search engine. Crawling over thousands of pages of words and numbers, he commits the data to memory and indexes it for regurgitation on demand. "When Mozart's name is mentioned", he says "a detailed entry appears in the screen in my head, Mozart, Wolfgan...
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OK Geeks, I have a question for you. Tell me where my reasoning is wrong. Linux is in many respects a superior operating system to Windows, and seems to work perfectly well for people who know what they're doing as a desktop operating system. The runaway success of products li...
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About a year ago Joshua Gans showed me some draft chapters for a book on parenting at which he'd been working away. To use an expression from the AFL, Joshua has a high 'work rate' and he writes blog posts in the morning over breakfast - and perhaps at some other times. Anyway...
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Peter Martin highlights an excellent column by Barry Hughes , but the part of the column I'd stress is not the idea that the RBA shouldn't be slowing the economy (and as a result increasing unemployment). As Hughes says, this is appropriate to prevent the current increase in p...
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I think I may have spoken too soon in my praise of Optus Wireless Broadband in this recent post - well the absence of a link brings me to my point - broadband shmoardband. My 'broadband' was too slow to allow me to put in a link. I just did a speed test on it and it's about 10...
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The Herald's transport correspondent Linton Besser reinforces standard confused thinking about motorway tolls in yesterday's edition. He reports that the NSW Government's 'Cashback' scheme, whereby private motorists can claim reimbursement for the tolls they pay on the M4 and...
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Thursday's Missing Link over the fold. A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian Andrew Norton bids farewell to the Australian De...
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Last week the mainstream media devoted tens of thousands of words to "analysing" the effects of the Brough/Howard NT Indigenous Intervention. Today the NT Department of Justice published its March quarter 2008 crime statistics (also see my previous post on NT crime figures ove...
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As a long time fan of Hegel, I remember thinking as I skimmed a book on him in a bookshop that Peter Singer would make an awful mess of him - as people like Bertrand Russell did from a similar tradition a couple of generations back. But though there were various bits of Singer...
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There's a dark side to the internet, says David Burchell , an eerie parallel universe that spreads across the web "like green moss on a neglected lawn." And here you are, right in the middle of it. The parallel universe Burchell is writing about is "the world of the political...
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Wednesday's Missing Link over the fold. A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian A Committee in the Coalition-dominated Senate g...
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Tuesday's Missing Link over the fold. A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian Daily life in Afghanistan Gary Sauer-Thompson , L...
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Check out this Blogging Heads . Its interesting to watch people you read as it adds a whole new dimension. Anyway, check out Tyler Cowen. Some politicians have the skill of speaking in perfect paragraphs. John Howard, Margaret Thatcher and Gough Whitlam spoke in perfect paragr...
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Based on the idea that a bleg is a blogged bit of begging, here is a blogged offer - a bloffer. I've just escaped from my Telstra wireless broadband subscription after two expensive years. If anyone wants my modem, just let me know and come round and pick it up. You have to pl...
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Monday's Missing Link is over the fold. A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian Ralph Buttigieg, believing Brendan Nelson's day...
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It's good to see that Melbourne academic Paul Mees continues to fight the good fight for rational public transport policy, unbowed by the disgraceful actions of his employer the University of Melbourne in recently demoting him at the behest of the Victorian government . In an...
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Well-being isn't just about our relationship with things, it's also about our relationships with each other. Poverty hurts, not just because it can leave you feeling hungry, cold and sick, but because it can also leave you feeling ignored, excluded and ashamed. In The Theory o...
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As Dan Herman argues , Governments using blogs is no big deal. They typically use them as new places to post press releases. Then again, that's better than nothing as the informality of blogs allows much more frequent posting so research agencies like the Congressional Budget...
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I've just finished reading Dancing with Strangers, which I've read in fits and starts because of lack of time. I'm still too busy to write a decent review, but no doubt you can find them if you look. The book was showered with praise on its release a few years ago. Rightly so....
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Sandy Levinson comments on recently deceased senior American political journalist Tim Russert: David Remnick has a very fine comment on Russert in this week's New Yorker . He notes, among other things, Russert's thorough preparation for his interviews and his desire to make ne...
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Is it just me or do other Troppo readers appreciate the irony (or rank hypocrisy depending on your level of cynicism) of the main exponents and proselytisers of fairness and equality in our society apparently applying a completely double standard, when it comes to their own re...
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Friday's edition over the fold. A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian I think the second one is LBJ but who's the third? Jim...
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Thursday's edition over the fold. A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian John Quiggin and Gary Sauer-Thompson look at the stat...
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Quite a dancer! HT The incomparable Kathy G .
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Wednesday's edition over the fold. A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian Tim Dunlop notes the AMA's bailing out of backing/pa...
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If you're interested in social policy and have a strong commitment to social justice then here's a job you might be interested in. Catholic Social Services Australia is looking for a new policy officer . CSSA is looking for an appropriately qualified and experienced person to:...
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Tuesday's edition over the fold. A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian The Missing Link team feels that we should complete th...
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Monday's edition over the fold. A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian (From Worst of Perth ) Can this gallery expect a visit...
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In a marginal note to Missing Link the other day, I expressed the view that Jason Soon and Helen Dale's advocacy for the LDP's Negative Income Tax + abolition of minimum wage policy was "persuasive". And so it was at first glance. Despite my frequently scathing remarks about e...
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At the local Rapid Creek Market this morning I gave Kevin Rudd two tomatoes. I have never given tomatoes to anyone, ever before - such is the seductive power of fame. My grandfather used to give us homegrown tomatoes - by the barrel at certain times of year. These ones were 'l...
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..Looks like a quiet night. I need to get something off my chest. I have just received a notice from the Juries Commission in Victoria that I am wanted for jury service. It's one of the letters a busy person dreads. You cannot get out of it, even by paying a fine. And they are...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian Phillip Toledanos new book Phone Sex (July 2008, Twin Palms) takes us into the boudoirs...
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Cyclists are an oppressed minority. Car drivers resent cyclists on the road, and pedestrians resent us on the footpaths, even when they're designated cycleways as well. On the same ride I've been told aggressively to get off the road and use the footpath by a car driver, and t...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian The hero. The leader. The god by Alexandre Kosolapov (via the Stumblng Tumblr ) Gary Sa...
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QUT researcher Axel Bruns (presumably along with usual colleagues Jason Wilson and Barry Saunders) has just published some new quantitative research about blogs which contains some interesting results. He/they undertook a textual analysis of 3 prominent blogs with somewhat div...
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An earlier version of this story in the Fairfax press seemed to be trying to beat up a spurious Aussie versus Kiwi stoush by highlighting some obscure survey purporting to show that Auckland was in the world's top 10 most liveable cities whereas Sydney and Melbourne both misse...
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Why is it do you think that jurors playing Sudoku during a criminal trial amounts to a miscarriage of justice sufficient to abort a trial but it's perfectly OK for a judge to fall asleep and snore?
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian We should be thankful for the small mercy that Tim Blair at least doesn't seem to belie...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian Should we be worried? (via Boing Boing ) Lauredhel and Fiona Reynolds discuss the absur...
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I recently bought an ultra-portable computer which seems pretty good. It's an ASUS U2E. The installation of Windows Vista has given me new reasons to hate Microsoft, but I won't go on about that here. (I have uninstalled Office 2007 as 2003 is better and I'm seriously consider...
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I've long regarded writing a letter to the editor of a newspaper as a rather sad and futile exercise. Far better to post on your own blog, where at least you're only inflicting your opinions on genuinely consenting adults with similar obsessions. However, I couldn't resist sen...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian Luvvies, but not Albert Finney playing Hamlet ( via Laura ) The inaugural downunder fem...
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One particularly lamentable aspect of 'he said - she said' reporting (and this is in an all lamentable range of phenomena) is that things don't exist for the media until they've been mentioned by someone sufficiently senior in a mainstream political hierarchy. Thus journalists...
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The YouTube service for slides has just been launched . I'm not entirely sure of the point of it, since one can post a powerpoint slide show on a web in ppt and it will be indexed by Google for the words (and for all I know the images) in it. So it can be found and viewed - in...
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It's a little surprising that, outside the RWDB blogs, virtually no attention has so far been paid to the current trial of Canadian right wing pundit Mark Steyn on (effectively) religious vilification proceedings by the British Columbia Human Rights Commission. Admittedly it's...
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On my way through page three of Gintis's reviews I came across a fascinating and disgruntled review of Krugman's Conscience of a Liberal . What's interesting is that as Gintis subsequently makes clear in comments, he's an ideological friend of Krugman's who nevertheless thinks...
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The more assiduous of those in the Tropposphere may have noticed Fred Argy by his absence in the last few weeks on this blog. Fred went to hospital for an operation and is recovering well. I've just spoken to him and wished him well. I hope he'll be back to his usual thoughtfu...
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There are two kids' games that are very gendered not so much in their gendered content as we understand the genders, but in their appeal to boys and girls. The first I observed in my daughter when she was in early primary school. It's routines that involve the mutual clapping...
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As I've said before, I'm a big admirer of Herbert Gintis - at least as part of the duo of Gintis and Bowles who wrote the marvellous essay " Is equality passe " and has a string of books and great articles to his name. His project is to develop the implications of what Gintis...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian Terry Sedgwick notes the loaded language in this headline announcing the predictable le...
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The Elite Diner in Urbana, Illinois just before it closed down ( via Flickr ) Some readers might have noticed that I occasionally add sidenotes to Missing Link querying why elitism seems to be such a dirty word for Australians (and probably Americans as well). I haven't to dat...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian One for nostalgic codgers like me (KP) - Paul McCartney performing "A Day in the Life"...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian via Larvatus Prodeo Tim Blair has been doing some sleuthing on the rumours that Kevin R...
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In a post I wish I'd written, Robin Hanson lists a series of unjustified presumptions readers of political opinion pieces (especially blog posts) often make. In my fairly long experience of attempting to discuss issues in the blogosphere and trying to make my meaning as clear...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian Apathetic Sarah imagines John Macarthur as a supporter of Camden's charming Kate McCull...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian Liberal politician Sophie Mirabella and demon spawn imagined (and explained) by Apathet...
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Last Thursday I rang a phone number to book a taxi. It isn't the normal number. It's the mobile number of Neil the taxi driver. Neil is a good fellow and many years ago - when I was at the Productivity Commission - I became aware of Neil's service. He runs a 'ring' of taxi dri...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian Worst of Perth wonders about the values of all the bogan talkback ranters harassing Hen...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian Suggest a caption (via Terry Sedgwick ). Thank God for those activist judges on the Sup...
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'One of my closest friends is Turkish, and she won't have anything to do with Muslims, OK?' Camden Council has finally voted on the Quranic Society's development application, and has unanimously voted against it . We now have to wait and see whether the applicants will appeal,...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian Random photo from Flickr - page 1 of 72,701 hits for "teenager". Is this more or less "...
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I've just spent two hours finding stuff for Missing Link because other team members (except the arts ones) didn't have time. However I've now discovered that the arts section, while full of great material, is also full of extraneous formatting code that will need to be strippe...
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Here's a column I've just written published today in the AFR. The Gruen Transfer Those with an unusual surname have to get used to spelling it. No its not Gluner. Not Glueball or Grewbie its Gruen G-R-U-E-N. The compensation is, your name identifies you or a family member pret...
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My ten year old son is in trouble. Last week his sports teacher, Mr Bryan said to his class "stand up if you've been a bad sport". Alex returned home having stood up. He then confided to his mother that he hadn't been a bad sport, but he thought he had better stand up to be su...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian Exclusive Club Troppo investigation reveals another Henson peddling kiddie porn. Where...
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The following paragraph is an abstract of the paper "The Effect of Employer Access to Criminal History Data on the Labor Market Outcomes of Ex-Offenders and Non-Offenders" by Keith Finlay Since 1997, states have begun to make criminal history records publicly available over th...
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The super-rich aren't super-smart says Ezra Klein . While it might be comforting to believe that that income differences represent differences in knowledge and skill, it's just not true: The massive gains in wealth in this country are apportioning to a small slice of rich peop...
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cycad tree ferns rude senile royal turd obsequious Tory blogger
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In a speech on May 19th, Tim Flannery reportedly proposed, as a last-ditch solution, the mass depositing of sulphur into our atmosphere to reduce the amount of sunlight hitting the earth, thus counter-acting the greenhouse effect of increased amounts of CO2 in the air. The spe...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian Lauredhel gives a hand to an aptly named blog called Photoshop Disasters . Paul Norton...
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ABC news story this afternoon: Northern Territory Police believe a woman found dead at Mindil Beach last night may have been assaulted in the hours before her death. Police received a report at 11pm that a woman was lying on the beach unconscious and bleeding from the mouth. P...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian Paul Norton looks at the current cult of global cooling and lessons unlearnt from South...
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It's not long since Paul Frijters raised the subject of paid maternity leave here, inspiring a long and stimulating discussion in the comments. The topic is in the air again, largely because the Productivity Commission has been looking into the issue. Unfortunately I stll have...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian Threats from certain Missing Link colleagues have resulted in a penis photo theme in to...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian Robert Rauschenberg's Skyway (1964)(he died this time last week, but better late than n...
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Below the fold is Crikey's ruminations on Bob Brown's story that he was offered $1 mil in coverage if he would support a particular media proprietor get stuff through the Senate. The thing that bugged me about Brown's story was that he said that he didn't disclose it at the ti...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian Reason 's Jesse Walker on the fate of the Spaghetti Monster (originally a comment on th...
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John Quiggin and Dan Hunter have written a very interesting survey article on Web 2.0 . They characterise the new innovation on the web as the innovation of the amateur. Their choice of word is deliberately provocative, and also rehabilitative. As they note, at least in the wa...
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Three quarters of America's wealth is invested in its people, writes Gary Becker . He argues that while physical capital is still matters, human capital now matters more. Where once a nation's wealth lay in the fertility of its soil, today it lies in the knowledge, skills and...
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Nicholas Gruen's post a couple of days ago on American RWDB shockjock Bill O'Reilly's dummy spit has got me thinking. Why haven't local TV programmers inflicted similar current affairs "personality" commentators on Australian audiences? After all, we've had their radio equival...
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I've added a new Australian sports blogs category to TroppoSphere , with lots of great feeds kindly identified by Guido (whose new blog is one of those featured). I've also split the arts blogs category into two - "theatre, film, TV and visual arts" and "books, music and gener...
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Many thanks to the readers who responded to our joint Burma campaign with John Quiggin by donating to aid agencies assisting the victims of Cyclone Nargis. They include: Dylan Nicholson (100), John Warburton (100), Kim Weatherall (150), Stephen Luntz (350), Robert Merkel (100)...
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You've heard of the tragedy of the commons and if not you can look it up here . But as the public commons burgeons on the internet and in the headlong rush of at least a substantial portion of the corporate sector towards open innovation (or more open innovation) there's anoth...
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A friend of mine's partner and her son are setting up a cafe/bakery in an old Church in Perth, Tasmania . So, in the true style of financial markets of the eighteenth century (my chosen favourite century to be part of - so long as I got one of the good parts) I've invested wit...
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How's this for commentary as news? The opening sentence of the lead story in The Age today . OPPOSITION Leader Brendan Nelson has sought to revive his ailing leadership with pledges to cut petrol excise and block a 70% tax hike on pre-mixed alcoholic drinks. How absolutely dis...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian The California State Constitution protects gay marriage! See today's ML "law" section ....
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The Archibald Prize Exhibition at the NSW Art Gallery winds up on Sunday. That doesn't leave much time, but, having seen it myself now, I strongly endorse Nicholas's advice from two months ago -- see it if you can. And if you have children between seven and twenty, take them....
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian A t-shirt every blogger should have, courtesy Will Wilkinson who argues (compellingly)...
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Heather Ridout was asked to give the Budget a mark out of ten on the radio today. She gave it 8/10. As I said to some colleagues today, I'd like to have been in her class. The two most long-standing governments since Menzies absolutely ripped into outlays in their first budget...
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Im going to look a right idiot if I was first steered to 3 Quarks Daily by someone here on Club Troppo. Still, its good enough to take the risk. The site describes its mission as . . . . present[ing] interesting items from around the web on a daily basis, in the areas of scien...
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Australia may be lucky and sail through the boisterous economic seas without any significant impact on unemployment. However, while we may have seen the worst of the credit crisis, I would rate this outcome as only a 1/3 probability. Allowing for the delayed impact of earlier...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian The Budget It's Wayne Swan's first but it's Andrew Bartlett's eleventh . Robert Merkel...
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Several readers have sent money to Burma's monks, via Avaaz . This is a progress report on Club Troppo's joint campain with John Quiggin to inspire reader donations to organisations assisting the victims of Cyclone Nargis in Burma. As John announced in an update yesterday, 'do...
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You may not know it but around 20% of the home loan market has just collapsed - the securitisation market. The banks are moving into the space and and, as a result, rationing credit elsewhere. Below the fold is an op ed in the Age about it. It introduces a theme you'll probabl...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian From Jeff at Rigorous Intuition . Like a fat kid eyeing off a doughnut, the inevitable...
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TroppoSphere TroppoSphere is a project I've been working on for quite a long while on and off. It's intended as a feed reader for people who don't want to use a feed reader! A gateway to a world of news and expert opinion and analysis for those with feedreader phobia. I suspec...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian From Terry Sedgwick . It's a bit like the armadillo book that gave rise to the original...
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"If everyone had enough, it would be of no moral consequence whether some had more than others", says Harry Frankfurt . Skepticlawyer agrees. In a recent post on 'progressive fusionism' she suggests combining Frankfurt's 'doctrine of sufficiency' with Amartya Sen's capabilitie...
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The Australian reports breathlessly that Lindsay Tanner can't guarantee that no working families will be worse off, nor that interest rates won't rise in the future. Nor can Malcolm Turnbull, or Kevin Rudd or anyone else. Or to put it more fully, they can't but if they did the...
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If you'll allow me my fancy, it occured to me that, mutatis mutandis , Edmund Burke might have been contrasting the slow cumulative progress of TQM or the Toyota Production System nicely written up by James Suroweki here , with more 'dynamic' (and often less successful) method...
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If you've been round bureaucracy for any length of time (and yes, folks, this includes anyone in the private, public or 'third' sector working for an organisation of any size) you'll know how hard it is to get good ideas up from the bottom to the top. Toyota built its dominanc...
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I haven't paid much attention to Telstra's participation in the public policy debate. It usually manages to get itself seen in a fairly poor light at least if one is not paying much attention as I haven't been. Even so, I've just read this speech by Phil Burgess (pdf), and I'm...
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With tens of thousands dead ( possibly a hundred thousand ) and hundreds of thousands of homes destroyed, the disaster in Myanmar is approaching the scale of the December 2004 tsunami. The difference is that it's confined to one extremely poor country with particularly poor in...
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I've been puzzling about international humanitarian interventions lately, in part because my daughter Bec is in the middle of a uni assignment on the subject, but mostly because as I write this Robert Mugabe continues to terrorise and impoverish his own people in Zimbabwe whil...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian Apathetic Sarah takes Julie Bishop's latest pronouncement to its logical conclusion App...
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I was going on about the renewed importance of public goods to the Review Panel on the Innovation System and so they asked me and another economists on the panel to do a bit of a write up for them. For various logistical reasons, the ultimate document was run up by me the nigh...
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As many of you know, I'm usually around Troppo for Missing Link purposes, and it's Missing Link that can take a great deal of the credit for Legal Eagle and I heading off on a new joint blogging venture . Jacques Chester - Troppo's redoubtable blog admin - can also take a bunc...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian Holbein sketch of Lady Guildford (via Scarlett W Blue ) Apathetic Sarah notes that Quee...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian Bernice Balconey , Kim and clarencegirl review Morris and Michael's most recent public...
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One of the respondents to my earlier post on NSW electricity privatisation accuses me of a possible "ideological bias against privatisation" and proceeds to make sweeping generalisation about the benefits of privatisation.. I thought I might clear the air on this issue. I have...
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I was more than a little surprised when what I thought was a reasonably uncontroversial item in yesterday's Missing Link elicited a heated response from frequent Troppo commenter and erudite legal eagle Patrick Fitzgerald. The item concerned arch-conservative US Supreme Court...
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The AFR published a letter of mine today on this topic. It is reproduced below. It was brief so in this post I elaborate on why I think Iemma and Costa messed up their arguments very badly. M Y AFR LETTER The debate on electricity privatization in NSW has gone off the rails, w...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian Tim Lambert on the fallacy inherent in yesterday's umpteenth climate change denialist "...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian Gummo's New-New Political Compass Apathetic Sarah anticipates an interesting judgement...
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One of my grand kids is studying economics at the University and, to help him with an essay on current macroeconomic policy in Australia, he asked me three rather pertinent questions.. 1. If there is an inflation problem which is overwhelmingly supply-side driven, as we now se...
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"The phrase is suddenly everywhere", said the New York Times' Katharine Seelye . It was 2000 and Al Gore was running for president. In his acceptance speech , Gore used the phrase 'working families' at least eight times. In Australia, Wayne Swan and Kevin Rudd seem equally kee...
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We've had web-translation for yonks. But given that podcasting is often an inefficient way to both take in and disseminate information I'd like to be able to go to a site and feed in a relevant audio or audio-visual file - or point the site to a YouTube video for instance and...
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Blogging allowed me to stumble on at least one simple description of my approach to economics. There are $100 bills lying round all over the place, in the form of perfectly simple things that we could do to improve things, that we don't. That's one of the reasons I get so anim...
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One of the most important things that I learned at the summit was in a conversation on the Saturday night dinner. I was in the 'productivity' stream but snuck off to the economics dinner where I encountered a businessman who had barracked for the West Coast Eagles. Collingwood...
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I am not a greedy man. Ever since it was announced that the London Mayoral elections would be a contest between Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson, I have had to confront the fact that I would not be that happy with whoever ended up as mayor. Ken, in fairness, has done a good j...
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And, in case you're intersted, the book program is broadcasting from the Clunes Booktown, some festival in which Clunes - which is near Ballarat - invites booksellers to have a big book sale in Clunes - this weekend. And there are other attractions. Listen all about it on that...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian From Terry Sedgwick Jason Soon points out how Craig Emerson has misrepresented Alan Mor...
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As I've said ad nauseam on this blog and elsewhere, and quoting John Kay, the way we work out what's good and what's not is not by assessing it individually but by reputation. We know that Apple makes insanely great products not because we get our screwdriver out and check its...
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Previous tatooed breasts scales of justice deep-sixed to avoid bad taste distraction from a post intended to provoke serious discussion ... John Greenfield is a conservative blog commenter who occasionally fulfils a useful function, rather like a canary in a coal mine. He can...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian Annie Leibowitz photo of 15 year old Hannah Montana star Miley Cyrus (see items under "...
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The Canberra Times published today an opinion piece of mine on a topic I have been writing about since late November and is familiar to Club Troppo readers. My original version is set out below. For various reasons, I may not be able to respond to comments quickly. Sorry. The...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian The Worst of Perth sculpts former WA Premier Geoff Gallop and yearns for his return in...
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I was listening to a podcast of a BBC interview with Ian "Supercrunchers" Ayres. Supercrunchers is a book which illustrates all the ways in which the 'new econometrics' or 'social stats' is revolutionising - well lets not get carried away - improving the judgement of all sorts...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian Mark Shorter's upcoming performance at MOP projects explores patriarchal modes of power...
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I have about three draft posts, all unfinished on a particular theme which I have touched on once before here . The general theme is the growing viability of doing well by doing good. One of the posts was called Googlenomics and referred to the massive amount of <jargon>consum...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian The new Political Compass per Gummo Trotsky Kev Gillett believes the only effect increa...
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I've never known. Anyway, I've discovered a blogger I'd not read before - a stroppy femmo who's a great read - who seems to have similar views to mine . Go and have a good squiz around her site .
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Jacques is advising us that we should upgrade to the latest version of Wordpress. He may well be right, but Nicholas and I are nervous/remaining to be convinced. Apparently there are some potential security issues with the version we're currently running. Our concern is that j...
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John Cargher is one of a handful of people who have been part of my consciousness for as long as I can I remember, and who are still doing their thing -- at least, he'll be in this category until tomorrow. There won't be many of these great constants left after that: a quick m...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian Anzac Day march Ken Parish indulges in some refuting of Albrechtsen and if nothing else...
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Love him or hate him . . . (when I grow up I want to be director of cliche management for Hill and Knowlton). Anyway John Quiggin has a characteristically good post about Paul Keating , contrasting the expression 'Howard haters' with 'Keating haters'. His point is that the wor...
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I was reading an honours thesis by Joel Ickiewicz and I thought his brief acknowledgements page was so cute I'd share it with other Troppodillians so, with Joel's agreement, it is below the fold and it has won Troppo's inaugural cutest acknowledgements page of the year. This e...
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Writing a post about a Janet Albrechtsen column is almost certainly an advanced symptom of insanity, ranking just behind hairy palms and checking to see if you have them. Nevertheless, her effort in yesterday's Oz about the alleged perils of an Australian charter of rights mer...
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Valid till 1 June Valid until Thursday, 1 May 2008 Borders Cashiers: For eligible book do the following: Ring item, select S1, highlight book, select S5, scan or enter coupon #, enter 25%, proceed. *Coupon offer applies to full priced non-fiction books only. "Great Price" stic...
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I've proposed a theory of political momentum on Troppo before - somewhere . . . don't ask me for the link (actually I've just thought of one ). But it goes like this. The really good politician is not focused on the next election, but rather trying to strategise a way of getti...
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Well he doesn't actually. I've just copied and pasted a post of his on his blog - below the fold. The contrasting characters (this is not just a matter of style) of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been prominently on display since the Pennsylvania results came in. Her ki...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian Graham Young points out yet another pointless quick-fix by the government and then offe...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian If you imagined that concrete "big things" at tourist spots were a uniquely Australian...
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A whilc back 'principle based' regulation was all the rage. Outcomes based regulation is another catch cry. In an interesting paper Chris Berg of the IPA argues that the 'mega regulators' of Australia - the ACCC, APRA and ASIC - have now carved out for themselves such discreti...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian 2020 Roundup Is it too late for Joshua Gans to get a guernsey in the Missing Link Wrapu...
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Following my outlining of Web 2.0 ideas for the ABC on Counterpoint, innovator and entrepreneur Ralph McKay got in touch with me to tell me of his own efforts to develop online opinion markets. These are interesting because they're not principally prediction markets. They're d...
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That's David Marr's verdict on the national song, and he asserts that many of his fellow best and brightest agree: EXTENSIVE soundings among delegates confirm I was not the only one who suddenly realised on Saturday morning as I was singing Advance Australia Fair that among th...
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I'm reading one of the better Web 2.0 books around instructively and amusingly called Here comes everybody which Peter Gallagher told me today came from Finnigan's Wake. I thought I was terribly clever when I discovered this book on the net within a day or so of it having been...
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I didnt want to let the Summit pass completely without sharing a few thoughts about it from an overseas Australian. Australians at home may be sick of the saturation media coverage of the 2020 Summit, but for many overseas Aussies these are exciting times. I cant obviously spe...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian Terry Sedgwick commits the ultimate act of Photoshop self-abuse 2020 Roundup Bernard Sl...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian Terry Sedgwick comes up with a strangely disturbing thought - the Bolter for Lord Mayor...
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The Fin asked me to write my summit idea up for them - so I did. 150 years after Adam Smith first expounded the miraculous way the markets invisible hand transforms private self interest into social prosperity, some economists argued that we could achieve the same result with...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Stephen Hill and Saint. Politics Australian Andrew Leigh summarises some of his favourite results from an ANU-run Governance poll . dr. fa...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Stephen Hill and Saint. Politics Australian How dumb is Liberal Frontbencher Christopher Pyne? Asked and answered at North Coast Voices ....
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Stephen Hill and Saint. Politics Australian Jacques Chester has scathing words for the Government's mealy mouthed excuses for formalising...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Stephen Hill and Saint. Politics Australian Australia is to get its first female governor general, with the announcement that Kylie Quenti...
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In an earlier blog, Mike Pepperday argued that equal opportunity programs enhance individual freedom - indeed that equality of opportunity (EP) is an essential pre-condition of effective choice and self-reliance. I instinctively agree with Mike. And I suspect most Australians...
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I don't know the ins and outs of gambling in Victoria. But I was amazed at the article by Stephen Mayne in Crikey! Victorian Premier John Brumby has acted to break the duopoly that holds licences to host poker machines in Victoria. Clubs will be able to bid for licences as wel...
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I read on that other (more illustrious) CT that Tom Lehrer turned 80 recently (on the 9th April). I guess most Troppo readers know him. I can't think of a greater talent for satirical music ever. Prodigious in quality rather than quantity - he performed 109 shows, and wrote 37...
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Ructions in Boganville: the first Camden protest, back in November A keen follower of events in Camden, I didn't overlook the news that the Camden/Macarthur Residents' Group, led by that great community bridge builder Emil Sremchevich, has announced plans to hold more protests...
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Yesterday, BG picked up one thread of the "mega blog discussion" kicked off by Don Arthur. I want to pick up another. In the discussion on Arthur's post, BG and I seemed to agree that, apart from a firm safety net which encouraged able-bodied people to work, the social policy...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Stephen Hill and Saint. Politics Australian Gary Sauer-Thompson provides a health update on the Murray River. Darryl Mason discusses an un...
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Subject to my usual caveats , Kevin's next post on tagged money is below the fold. An efficient private/public transport market Over the last three weeks this series of posts have shown the utility of "tagging money" with information as a tool to help implement policy. My inte...
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In the recent mega blog discussion kicked off by Don Arthur, I ventured the opinion that "the truly remarkable thing is that the Gini coefficient of equivalised disposable income has only increased from 0.28 to 0.31 in the last 30 years of so." Given the underwhelming response...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Stephen Hill and Saint. Politics Australian Pavlov's Cat demanded a photo of Nicholas, Ken and James in swimwear to balance the ledger aft...
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I'll be giving a seminar to the CIS tomorrow on Hayek and regulation. Somewhat to my surprise, The Australian asked me for an op ed, but then the editor got squeezed for space. As she wanted to run it on the day I gave the paper it got quite chopped about , though I hope the m...
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For better or worse, here are my answers to the two compulsory questions for those wishing to make it to the summit. No surprises for regular Troppo readers - I've learned the art of repetition. But they could have had any number of other ideas. A few ideas promised for Troppo...
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Swan Lake , so second hand, on TV, in Darwin, yet even still, there are tears rolling down my face as the final act resonates. From beginning to end this ballet is a grand romantic gesture reconfigured with Murphy's grand contemporary choreography. This interpretation dips its...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Stephen Hill and Saint. Politics Australian Hmm. Can we engineer a feminism snark thread two days in a row, thereby consolidating ML's tit...
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I did not apply to participate in the 20/20 summit but I did submit a 500 word piece on employment policy. Although Club Troppo readers would have heard my views before, the submission is set out below. I also had an interesting disagreement with The Australian editorial write...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Stephen Hill and Saint. Politics Australian This is an entry in a contest to match new products with old advertising visuals. Check out al...
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Ignominious isn't it? You get invited to the 2020 Summit as one of the (cough) 'best and brightest' and they ask you just a few questions, and the leave the hardest till last. What have you been wrong about in the last 10 years? I could say that I was wrong in expecting that m...
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Here is a book review that has recently been published in Policy Magazine . Book Review: Full disclosure: the Promise and Perils of Transparency, Cambridge University Press, New York. By Fung, Archon, Graham, Mary and Weil, David, 2007. Over seventy years ago Friedrich Hayek p...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Stephen Hill and Saint. Politics Australian Saint just doesn't see the funny side of this unofficially sanctioned Toyota ad : In as much a...
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What shape is the income distribution of Andrew Leigh's dreams? Even he doesn't know. "I don’t have a strong sense of what the right level of inequality is", he writes . "Indeed, I'm not even sure I have the right intellectual framework for answering the question." The questio...
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BBC TV screened a debate yesterday on the future of old and new media. Panellists included Google founder Sergey Brin and Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein. I'll certainly be watching when the streaming video becomes available in the next day or two. It's a popular topic int...
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In writing this article , it occured to me that one way to describe my own approach to economics is the search for the $100 bill on the pavement. That is, if you can find ways of bringing new ideas into some well developed framework (well new-ish ideas or just ideas that are c...
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One of the best investments my wife and I ever made was $1,000 for a midwife for the delivery of our second child. For this we got a stream of advice and a few visits before the delivery and then she was with us throughout the delivery. The woman in question had been head nurs...
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Today's Herald reports that the NSW Treasury has done its own estimates of the costs of achieving various targets for carbon emissions. The NSW Treasurer, Michael Costa, said it would cost $430 billion to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 80 per cent as outlined by Ross...
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A truly lovely space non? As I've been thinking about all the exigencies of making 'continuous improvement' a feature of our regulatory culture and institutions, I read an intriguing and, in such circumstances inspiring essay by Glyn Davis (pdf), cleverly titled "A city of two...
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In all the relevant senses of the word. I've not said anything about the Summit here mainly because I don't think there's much to say about it until we see more of what it does and doesn't achieve. And even if it isn't a great success I can't see how it will be a big failure....
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Subject to my own reservations outlined in the introduction to Kevin's first guest post, here's his second. Improving the Health Industry Market Place by Kevin Cox The general theme in this set of blogs is how to overcome market failures or to create markets with tagged money...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Stephen Hill and Saint. Politics Australian Brendan Nelson asks: " What is the suffering of the people who are evicted by banks, compared...
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I was delighted to hear Radio Eye's bio on the late and thoroughly great Campbell McComas . I first heard him in his prototypical role as the Cambridge Criminal Lawyer Granville Williams. A bootleg tape of a marvellous lecture he gave impersonating this fictitious person - the...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Stephen Hill and Saint. Politics Australian To keep his hand in while he waits for the next election to bring on another season of bungled...
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Under John Howard, the Liberal Party embraced a form of big-spending conservative social democracy, says Andrew Norton . The most formidable opponents of limited government are conservatives. In a comment on Andrew's blog , Winton Bates wonders whether this might lead to a rea...
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I can't really blame Australian Young Labor for attempting to clamp its collective lips on the public tit in the wake of the Rudd government's accession to power. I don't even violently object to their proposal that students be allowed to add the cost of textbooks to their HEC...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Stephen Hill and Saint. Politics Australian Andrew Bartlett reports on the Senate Inquiry into housing affordability : The first day of he...
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In a recent post I argued that "Over the very time we were clearing away the detritus of the various collectivist institutions we cobbled together under the name of the Australian Settlement, or ‘protection all round’, while we proceeded with economic reform by deregulating ma...
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It seemed like a reasonable enough idea. Responding to fears of a terrorist attack by ' dirty bomb ' or nuclear weapon , US Customs and Border Protection installed hundreds of radiation portal monitors at seaports, land border ports of entry and crossings across the United Sta...
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Quite a while ago, Kevin Cox approached me with an idea he had called 'energy rewards'. Kevin may wish to chime in on comments with an appropriate link to the best explanation of the idea. In any event it's a method of generating purpose specific permits or certificates which...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, Gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Stephen Hill and Saint. Politics Australian Mark Bahnisch tries to avoid taking an obvious approach to the 2020 summit . Robert Merkel sho...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Stephen Hill and Saint. Politics Australian Petering Time is listening to Kevin and hearing a dog-whistle . Despite the end...
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Paradox one Over the very time we were clearing away the detritus of the various collectivist institutions we cobbled together under the name of the Australian Settlement, or 'protection all round', while we proceeded with economic reform by deregulating markets to try to opti...
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Courtesy of Clive Crook , here's a fascinating chart on skills development across OECD countries. The graph shows the proportion of the labour force with at least a college degree, by age group, for OECD countries. The bigger the span of the vertical lines, the more younger ge...
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Hillary Clinton is a strange female politician. Politicians have to play to their strengths, and some of those are gendered. I argued in this post that it would surely be very difficult for Hillary Clinton to win by being aggressive. I think that's a taboo with women politicia...
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Here's an example, but there's a whole gallery of pretty amazing landscape's here . Not bad for an (excellent) economic journalist.
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They're all off to America and the UK .
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Stephen Hill and Saint. Politics Australian Derek Barry is unimpressed by the gimmickry of Earth Hour . Apathetic Sarah was...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Stephen Hill and Saint. Politics Australian Gary Sauer-Thompson is skeptical about whether co-operative federalism will imp...
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A few years ago I sponsored a bunch of Afghani kids on a soccer playing tour of Queensland and NSW. It was a privilege to meet some of the kids. I expected to find kids who'd grown up in a peasant culture, who would not be particularly interested in education. One tends to thi...
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In the furore that has broken out over Chinas crackdown in Tibet, Ive been surprised that so little has been said about President Hu Jintaos previous administration of Tibet as a rising communist party cadre. After all, it was Hus iron fisted handling of the last riot in Tibet...
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For rugby fans who've been watching with increasingly frustrated bemusement Ewen McKenzie's bizarre coaching of the NSW Waratahs to play stereotypical 10 man rugby despite boasting one of the most potent backlines in the Super 14 and despite the fact that the Crusaders and eve...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Stephen Hill and Saint. Politics Australian Lewis Holden relays suggestions of incrementally enacting a Clayton's Republic,...
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For some reason, Saint decided to include an anti-global warming rant in today's Missing Link . It's part of an "interview" between warming denialist Institute of Public Affairs shill/ scientist Jennifer Marohasy and denialist pundit Michael Duffy: Duffy asked Marohasy: Is the...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Stephen Hill and Saint. Politics Australian RWDB JF Beck thinks this Guardian photo is typically misleading greenie propaga...
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Steve Randy Waldman's blog interfluidity is a good read. He's a knowledgeable fellow with a penchant for trying to work things out from first principles. He's good to read on what's wrong with hedge funds and much else besides in modern financial markets. Here's a parable of h...
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A fascinating review of Craig Venter's autobiography . Naturally I'm sympathetic to this guy who looks like he values scientific creativity and achievement above other things, and will improvise through the miasma of institutions that exist to further science to get what he's...
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I'm pleased to see that the apparent suicide death of the hideously disfigured and terminally ill Chantal Sebire seems to have reopened the debate about euthanasia in Europe. Pity the same isn't true here in Australia. Apparently her pain couldn't be reduced even with morphine...
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This post began as a comment on my previous Obama post which consisted of a trivial post by me followed by some great content from commenters. I was thanking Tim Lambert for his comments and the links he provided - to Charles Murray of all people, but it all got away from me s...
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Amazing what creatures of habit we are, and how powerful curiosity is. I was on Brad DeLong's Feedblitz email drip for a year or so and typically checked out the daily email's contents, and then followed up if there were items of interest. I took myself off it and didn't repla...
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James Farrell needs to take a break from Missing Link editing for a few months for work reasons. As a result, we need a replacement member of the Missing Link team, to cover his half of the "lefty" blogs. That involves reviewing articles from around 30 or so left-leaning blogs...
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If you haven't seen or read Obama's speech on the Reverend White, you should. Or if you're stretched for time, Clive Crook edits it down to the best bits - which are still pretty extensive. He really isn't just a pretty face.
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I missed this program on the ABC but I recommend it highly. Paul Woodley is a guy with a good grasp of economic theory who's spent a lot of time in the markets and has come to the simple conclusion that financial markets seem to be dysfunctional. He's presumably made a packet...
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Everyone knows by the now that Bear Stearns the venerable, bulge bracket, but not white shoe Wall Street firm basically went under earlier this week. For those who prefer a more redistribution leaning economic system you love this story. When Wall Street goes into redistributi...
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There's been something of a libertarian theme at Club Troppo this week, what with Fred Argy's rather unlikely characterisation of Kevin Rudd as a libertarian on any topic other than shameless self-promotion, and my snarky comment about libertarians' self-confessed lack of attr...
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Read this piece and cry. Steketee
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australian Andrew Bartlett puts the case for a "peoples' boycott" of the Beijing Olympics . It's a brave stance for a politician...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australian John Quiggin responds to Ross Gittins' accusation that he and Nicholas Gruen didn't address the 'real reasons' for th...
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Prompted by the exchange between Gruen and Gittins on NSW privatisation, I asked myself a much broader and pertinent question: what should be the proper role of government in the allocation of capital in Australia? At the two ideological extremes, the answer is simple. The int...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australian Gam and Currency Lad both posted fitting tributes on the finding of the wreck of HMAS Sydney after 67 years. CL, howe...
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Jonathan Powell, Tony Blairs former chief of staff, has given his first interview about life inside No.10 during the Blair government. For those unfamiliar with him, Powell (pronounced Pole) was amongst the former PMs longest standing consiglieres; he was there the day Blair e...
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The Love Gods are back after a much-needed rest to recharge their advisory potency. Replete with psychic Viagra they're ready again to hop into another romantically beset reader. This week we've raided the mailbag of Murdoch lovelorn columnist Kate de Brito, whose brother Sam...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australian From Students for a Free Tibet - also see this CNN video Andrew Bartlett invites submissions to a Senate committee he...
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After Ross Gittins' recent generosity to me , I can't complain. But this column is a bit - um . . . simplistic. He begins thusly. YOU don't have to be very bright to pick holes in the arguments Morris Iemma and Michael Costa have been using to sell their plan to privatise elec...
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Clive Crook defends Obama's oratory from accusations that it's vapid and empty. "Of course it is" he insists. And when you think about it, he has a point. The great speeches, however uniquely crafted are usually simple exhortations. "We shall fight them on the beaches and all...
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Meanwhile, an avalanche on Mars, the first extra-terrestrial avalanche observed by humangoes. And just to remind you of your place in the world, here's a bit of a galaxy - which appropriately enough is part of one of your standard galaxy clusters. It's 50,000 light years acros...
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I've been playing around today with a Google Map Generator utility, to show CDU law students how to find the venues for various interstate intensive seminars we're running for our external undergraduate program over the next few weeks. It's pretty nifty, and depicts a location...
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Thanks to Ken Parish for sending me a link to this (pdf) article on Gordon Tullock's critique of common law. As I read the article I was respectively irritated, pleased and then irritated again. But it's a good and interesting article. My irritation comes from the Procrustean...
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I went to the Archibald when in Sydney yesterday. I didn't think much of the winner - though I don't think I really 'got' it. But I was amazed at how many good portraits there were - I'd say at least ten really good ones. I looked around and thought - "well maybe that's what a...
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Good on the monthly for putting up videos of various things related to its flagship publication - the monthly mag. But one request. I virtually never look at videos on the computer. I've got too much else to do. So when I go to Ted if I want to listen to something, I'm gratefu...
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Yikes? The last house that Adam Smith lived in - at Canongate - is up for sale. And the local council may let it go to developers. Oh cruel irony of ironies, the ultimate Adam Smith problem - a council that doesn't know the difference between the Theory of Moral Sentiments and...
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Well books actually! But the heading above was the caption of an early Leunig cartoon - with the graphic being . . . yes, a tong sale. And remember, print the linked coupon out as many times as you like for separate book purchases.
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australian Gummo Trotsky's Word of the Day (Expression of the Day?) is ex gratia , as in the ex gratia payments to carers that t...
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Has anybody else who has read Mark Bahnisch's Online Opinion article today about Kevin Rudd's IR reforms been instantly reminded of the Monty Python sketch about how to rid the world of all known diseases ?
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australian Ken Lovell highlights the hijinks of a WA building industry employer : Given this long history of bastardry by builde...
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So the cash rate has gone up to 7.25%, and the banks will probably raise their lending rates by more than 0.25%. We all understand the official reasons why the RBA has done this. The inflation rate is too high and shows no immediate signs of falling. It's too high because tota...
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There was an extraordinary article in the Australian yesterday ( here ) by Vaclav Klaus. In his article, which is a condensation of a speech for a conference of climate sceptics, Vaclav makes mince meat out of the climate alarmists and accuses them of having bad intentions. He...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australian Mary, Frederik and family as Bald Archy winners Peter Martin is contemptuous of media and Coalition scare-mongering o...
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Hello boys and girls. See if you can work out where this picture was taken?
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australian Terry Sedgwick continues his focus on occasional Coalition MP Mark Vaile The Currency Lad on the limits of Rudd's Bru...
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On Line Opinion (OLO) asked for some ideas for the Rudd 2020 Summit. I submitted a piece which was published today in OLO . It argues that fear of inflation should not force Australia to accept a permanent army of half a million jobless persons. There are alternatives. If I ha...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australian Jim Fryar takes a libertarian look at (repugnant) police raids in Melbourne on the homes of terminally ill people con...
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Clinton campaign manager Maggie Williams on the result of the Wyoming caucuses - which split 61% to Obama and 38% Clinton. "We are thrilled with this near-split in delegates and are grateful to the people of Wyoming for their support." Wyoming's 12 delegates go 7 to Obama and...
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I was intrigued to find that when the Public Service Commission launched into the project of tackling red tape, they found they were beset by myths. Just like Lateral Economics said in its report on Regulation and Innovation for the Victorian Government: The finer points of mu...
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Hillary is hopping into Obama any way she knows how. Jonathon Chait takes up the story. The morning after Tuesday's primaries, Hillary Clinton's campaign released a memo titled "The Path to the Presidency." I eagerly dug into the paper, figuring it would explain how Clinton wo...
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HT: Henry Ergas for the picture
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australian via Terry Sedgwick Pommygranate summarises former Treasury Secretary John Stone's arguments on why John Howard was Au...
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Watching The 7:30 Report last night, I found myself quickly checking the remote to make sure I hadn't accidentally switched over to A Current Affair or Today Tonight . The ABC's slant on a story about the "need" for enforced ISP filtering to protect the kiddies from porn was e...
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Picking up on Nicholas Gruens posting of 4 March on Bowles and Gintis essay ("Is equality passe?"), I notice that B and G point to opinion survey evidence that Americans, while hating welfare, support many redistribution measures which are consistent with reciprocity norms, in...
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Whats the difference between James Lovelock environmental scientist and inventor of the Gaia hypothesis, and Andrew Bolt Herald Sun columnist and inventor of such useful terms such as red mist, green gods and compassion industry? Well... less than you might think. James Lovelo...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australian via Bastards Inc John Quiggin rejoices in the Federal Government's decision to buy water from irrigaters and give it...
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The Boston Review is a good thing. I found this article on Alexander Hamilton , which is a serious debunking job on the hagiographies of Alexander Hamilton. I'm not well read enough to arbitrate between this guy and those he's taking on, but despite the occasional intemperance...
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The architect Victor Gruen 'invented' the shopping mall. He was the first person to come up with and execute the idea of a hermetically sealed shopping area - something that dovetailed with the imperatives of property development, retailing, as well as ideas of femininity and...
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Paul Krugman's theory is that the Bush administration and the Replublican Party are so bad, so partisan, that the Democrats should be unafraid of a little populism of their own to knock them off. No objections there. They're a very special breed, US Republicans. But then they...
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The SMH which published an op ed of mine has just sent me their editorial ethics policy. I have no trouble agreeing to it. But I have some concerns about their journalists. This isn't a criticism of them. And it's not a criticism of the policy - but there is a bit of a disconn...
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From yesterday's Fin Many Australians are mesmerised by an inquiry into Wollongong City Council and some of its councillors and staff and developers. NSWs Independent Commission Against Corruption is unveiling a plot which links sex, bribes, blackmail, greed, abuse of office a...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australian The Victorian Government's big new land release won't solve the housing crisis if people can't get there, argues Jere...
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In recent months, in newspaper articles and letters and in Club Troppo positings, I have been hammering the theme that (a) the short term inflation risk is largely cost push and only marginally driven by excess demand (as reflected in wages and profit margins) (b) the RBA and...
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"Is equality passé " by Bowles and Gintis is a terrific essay which I thoroughly recommend to all who've not read it. It's a much stronger foundation for what has often been the flailing around of the 'third way' than some of the more widely acknowledged high priests like the...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australian tigtog believes that a Federal Government scheme for national registration of medical professionals will help to weed...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australian Does D.S. stand for "diced and sliced" or ... ? Nicholas Gruen finds time off from zig-a-zig-ahhing to compare and co...
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" Now listen, you queer . Stop calling me a crypto Nazi or I'll sock you in your goddamn face and you'll stay plastered..." Everyone agreed that William F Buckley was good television. When the American Broadcasting Company were looking for a conservative commentator for the 19...
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I am a state in the US. A higher proportion of my economy is given over to research and development than any other comparable area. I am unlikely to be where you'd think. Which state am I? And what proportion of gross state product is given over to research and development?
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Henry Ergas is in my pantheon of 'most' Australian economists. Of the Australian economists I've known, Glenn Withers knows most about Australian (and other countries') public policy, John Quiggin is probably the cleverest and most academically and polemically productive, and...
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I'm a fan. He was the editor of The Economist's excellent "Economics Focus" for a good while. He may even have been nice enough to have been the person who decided to write up some of my work for the world. Anyway he went off to Atlantic Monthly where I think he still writes s...
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Peter Martin rang me yesterday morning because he told me he was going to write up my ideas on regulation, though we didn't talk as long as both of us would have liked because his commitments at the time, and my subsequent commitments meant we couldn't speak again. Journalism...
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Here is a piece published in the AFR yesterday. I. Just as Marshall McLuhan argued that, in media the medium was the message, one can say something similar about style and substance in politics. The style is the substance or at least comes to determine it. The political histor...
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I've heard it attributed - perhaps apocryphally - to John Maynard Keynes the line that a legal training is a form of brain damage. I couldn't find it on google when I last looked, so I don't know if he said it. But is it true? Well I have a legal training - of sorts - and duri...
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We're only about 3 or 4 subscribers away from 50. If anyone wants to jump on board - this is your last change to email me on [my first name] AT gruen DOT com DOT au.
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In a recent post critical of a CIS article on New Zealand by Phil Rennie , Nicholas Gruen expressed "disappointment" that the author "cherry picked" to "make favoured points in line with the author's priors". Today there is an article by Professor James Allan in The Australian...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australian David Tiley brings grossness into sharp focus with a post titled anyone seen Fido lately? Ken Lovell and Bridget Grea...
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"At a personal level, few people are as charismatic, capable and ruthless as this mixed-race political phenomenon." Read all about it .
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Thanks to Ross for permission to post what he calls his 'sermon to the Rudd Government' delivered as: NEW DIRECTIONS IN ECONOMY POLICY, a talk to the Economic Society evening seminar, Sydney, Tuesday February 26, 2008 It occurs to me that, as the journalist of the panel, the m...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australian Yes I know some people whinge about excessive coverage of the Apathetic Youths , but this image about the Rudd govern...
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( posted for Jessica by a proud and biased step-parent who thinks it shows a fine clarity of observation and expression for a 13 year old ) First I would paint a dark grey sky that looked like it was about to cry. Then there would be cracked and old red stairs that led up to a...
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I hope Nicholas keeps writing here at Troppo now that he's rightly famous and important . Then again, I don't necessarily envy someone who must respond with grace and patience if their advice, like that of Ross Garnaut, is relegated to "input" status when it's politically inco...
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I've been in touch with the US vendor of laptops Portableone from whom I purchased a Fujitsu laptop about four years ago. They're a good crew so if you want a laptop, buy it from them and you're likely to save money on the inflated prices here. They don't like the Toshiba's sc...
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I've always wondered. I don't much like his stuff, while acknowledging that the early work was interesting. And I guess you get marks for creating an icon - Ned Kelly. The Kelly series is very compelling. But, though I wouldn't rate my views on the subject as particularly wort...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australian Shaun Cronin regrets that there are as yet no grounds for sacking the NSW government : All Iemma is guilty of is gros...
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A week or so ago I was rung by the NSW Unions and asked to speak to the Unsworth Committee which is looking at the NSW's proposal to privatise retail and generating assets in the NSW industry. They wanted me to speak on the AAA rating. I said I wouldn't oppose the privatisatio...
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[caption id="attachment_30542" align="alignleft" width="654"] Firbank College from the air (You could probably tell that it was "from the air" - but this is Club Troppo boldly going where no stakeholders' expectations have every been.)[/caption] I spent the day - well the firs...
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Some loyal Troppodillians might recall a post of mine from the dim dark past celebrating my having downloaded a great track which was the Beatles singing 'Tie me kangaroo down, sport' with Rolf Harris, complete with specially written lyrics. "Don't ill treat me pet dingo, Ring...
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Odnyam Odsuren as the young Temudjin So Mongol has lost out to The Counterfeiters in the Oscars and I'm aggrieved. Mind you, Mongo l was the only nominee in the Best Foreign Film category that I'd seen or indeed knew the first thing about, so I'm slightly biased. But I loved i...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australian John Quiggin wonders whether it's time to give the B team a turn in New South Wales, and Australian Politics believes...
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(posted on behalf of The Receptionist) Somehow it's always me who ends up doing the work around here. As Dr Troppo's receptionist I seem to have a never ending series of chores to perform. Clearing out beer bottles and pistachio nut shells from under his desk, washing cigarett...
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I was going to put this in the snark section of Missing Link but decided it deserved a post of its own. Tim Blair is currently stoushing with a trio of academic researchers into blogging and "citizen journalism". Jason Wilson , Axel Bruns and Barry Saunders apparently have an...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australian Harry Clarke admires the Garnaut interim report, and shows how the government's reaction to it conforms to a pattern...
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Well, that pun has been made before I just made it, but I was going over Crikeys I'd not had time to glance at this week and came across Christine Milne's take on Garnaut. As I read it at first I thought it was Glenn Milne and it rather took me aback. In any event, Milne's pie...
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Ross Gittins said some flattering things about me in his column this weekend - which was very nice of him. One thing the column talked about was the "pressure - particularly from business - for the states to adopt a uniform approach" to various things like "workers compensatio...
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This time last year the British media was buzzing with stories about the demise of marmalade . In January, The Grocer reported that sales of marmalade fell by 4.4% in the year to 4 November 2006 . Worse still, most marmalade consumers have their best toast munching years behin...
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I want to return, hopefully with whatever wider perspective a few weeks brings, to Paul Keating's inflammatory remarks about the late right wing pundit Paddy McGuinness. We should keep in mind for a start, as Peter "Mumble" Brent implicitly noted at the time, that McGuinness h...
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If you've not seen them yet. From Martin Feldstein .
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Below the fold is the text of a talk I gave to the NSW Branch of the Fabian Society in Sydney last Wednesday evening, on 'Economic Challenges Facing the New Labor Government'. Also speaking to the same topic were John Edwards, Chief Economist of HSBC Australia (and a former ec...
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Since I posted something on the equilibrium unemployment rate or NAIRU (the minimum unemployment rate consistent with low and stable inflation), it has become a really hot political topic in Canberra. I also participated in the subsequent debate on the topic in various blogs....
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australian The main message of Garnaut's interim report , as John Quiggin sees it, is that: At this point, the risk of moving to...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australian Apathetic Sarah asks a difficult question: will Brisbane be stupid enough to re-elect Campbell Newman for a second te...
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Can anyone explain why inflation rates are conventionally reported on a 'year-ended' basis, despite the fact that we have quarterly price indices? The Reserve Bank Governer's press release of 5 February said that CPI inflation on a year ended basis picked up to 3 per cent in t...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australian RWDB J.F Beck notes that new PM Kevin Rudd is insightful enough not to piss off Brian Burke, while pissed-off 'lefty'...
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I found my ten year old watching the end of a TV show about kids tonight. He was watching it because he was anxious that he wasn't doing his homework. Sound familiar? Anyway, the show was Brat Camp is a reality TV show that aired tonight. The blurb says that it's been on befor...
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I've just been asked by the Department of PM&C to nominate someone to go to the 202o Summit. Who should I nominate - and why? This post will be moderated strictly. Suggestions should be serious and I hope you'll provide good reasons. Of course there will be people who want to...
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Posted in Politics - national, Politics - international, Life, Philosophy, Environment, History, Education, Society, Religion, Economics and public policy, Science, Gender, Journalism, Health, Climate Change, Political theory, Law
This post accompanies, and is explained by the post immediately above it.
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Today's AFR column. These Thai workers made their views about electricity privatisation very clearly known. Mind you, that isn't of itself a great argument against it, just an apt photo - KP (from The Age ) Paul Keatings strength in government was his ability to make the case...
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Anyone who wants to participate in Troppo's bulk subscription to Crikey! should email me on nicholas at gruenxxx dot com dot au - and remove those 'x's. If you subscribed last year you should get an email from me. Depending on numbers the cost will be as follows. 3 5 Annual Su...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australian Andrew Bartlett was not surprised by the revelation that some of Howards ministers didnt know that WorkChoices might...
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Nice of you to join us Mr Stalin .
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I've never understood central bank's recent penchant for small changes in monetary policy - these days 0.25% per month. The idea is that the facts emerge slowly, economies respond to monetary policy slowly (with long and variable lags) so our changes should be slow too. But th...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australian John Quiggin has a guest post by Bree Blakeman and Nanni Concu with a field assessment of the NT intervention, with p...
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"The Monkees are too hip for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ", writes Robert Forster . Is he right? Hired as actors for a TV series, Michael Nesmith , Peter Tork , Micky Dolenz and Davy Jones went on to feature in one of the most successful American pop bands of the 1960s. The...
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I'm having to do a lot more travel, so I want to buy an ultralight PC. I think I want to buy a Toshiba Portege R500. Here's a review . I'm also wondering what options I should choose. I understand it's available with a 120 Gig hard drive or a 64 K solid state memory if you pay...
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Photo by yellowrubberduck on Flickr Nicholas Gruen mentioned many moons ago an idea for a useful feature for Club Troppo. Apparently Crikey used to run an occasional roundup of interesting publications from thinktanks and other more academic sources, but subsequently discontin...
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To your right is an historic picture. A picture of the occasion on which Lincoln gave what he thought was his best speech. The Second Inaugural. There he is reading from his notes. In surfing around the subject when I posted my piece on Obama's rhetoric - Obama described Linco...
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Last week's Love Gods column was sadly blighted by the fact that our supplicant middle-aged lawyer was a distinctly unsympathetic character. This week it's different. Our plaintive female client is in a terrible pickle, albeit one involving a husbandly type presciently diagnos...
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Here's a nice decoding of those cadences in Obama's speeches. " In his speeches, Obama pretends to be a hero out of Joseph Campbell. He talks about being on a journey that is about more than just hope and change . If you want to walk together down his American road , he wants...
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Paul Krugman's latest column - below the fold. A Crisis of Faith By PAUL KRUGMAN A decade ago, during the last global financial crisis, the word on everyones lips was contagion. Troubles that began in a far-away country of which most people knew nothing (Thailand) eventually s...
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In a recent meeting with a person who is pretty senior in the automotive industry he was telling me that certain things close to his heart (which had something to do with the government subsidising his business!) would be 'good for jobs'. He's a bright sensible guy and, unlike...
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[caption id="attachment_30539" align="alignleft" width="317"] These types of tram-poles still exist at three Three Sites: Fitzroy Street, St. Kilda Peel Street, North Melbourne Victoria Parade, East Melbourne. [1. As explained on the Victorian Heritage Website "These three set...
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Are very often dodgy. Oddly only a few 'economic rationalists' have been willing to blow the whistle on them. Doing some research on our state governments' peculiar penchant for pecuniary populism - their focus on government net debt rather than government net worth, I came ac...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australia Apparently Peter Costello is retiring from Parliament . As if anyone cared. The case of the Archbishop and Sharia Law...
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Photo by Pierre Pouliquin on Flickr Demands for compensation for the " stolen generations " seem to be reliable generators of fear and loathing on the part of many Australians, particularly (but not only) those of a conservative persuasion. RWDB QC and blogger Peter Faris is a...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australia Right wing gay Christian blogger John Heard approves of the Rudd apology. Economist Harry Clarke doesn't, while Tim Bl...
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The Age asked me for 200 words on whether the Government should renege on the tax cuts. I said they shouldn't. They also asked Joshua Gans what he thought - though they don't seem to have asked him for a direct opinion on the tax cuts. I wasn't going to bother posting my piece...
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The reaction to Nelson's speech The most interesting and puzzling thing about the Apology Day events was undoubtedly Brendan Nelson's speech . Having agreed to support the motion after a process of uninspiring vacillation, he might have been expected either to say something sh...
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This piece was written for the AFR as a longish op ed. It hung around on account of it being hard to squeeze in as offshore financial systems melted down and as interest rates in Australia melted up. But I'm glad it's out. A month or so having passed between its having been wr...
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Only marginally related to the post, but a great image just the same - from turtblu on Flickr Readers with prodigious memories may recall a post I wrote a couple of years ago about the work of psychologist Jonathan Haidt on the cognitive basis for human morality. Haidt has dev...
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Well, Gideon Haigh may be the embodiment of "self-loathing leftism", but at least he's been known to buckle on the pads - photo by Rae Allen on Flickr ...goes to Gideon Haigh. Last Sunday was the first episode of Outsiders on ABC and of course the first topic of discussion was...
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By abbietabbie on Flickr Yes, folks. It's been a longer wait than we'd intended, but Missing Link is back for 2008. And, just as Peter Cundall always says " That's your bloomin' lot " at the end of every episode of his gardening show, so too I'm not going to resist the temptat...
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Horta in happier times - from reesa lee at Flickr Poor East Timor. Its President Jose Ramos-Horta lies in a serious but stable condition in Royal Darwin Hospital just across the creek from where I'm writing this, having been operated on for 2 1/2 hours last night to remove 3 b...
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There now seems to be majority, if not overwhelming, support for the Apology along the ideological spectrum. But it's clear from comments by several parliamentarians , as well as the resurfacing of an infamous email letter that Hansonism is alive and well. It's no great surpri...
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Oh - D stands for Default (super) . The text of Ross's most recent column is over the fold. Postscript: Alan Jones' executive producer rang and asked if I'd go on his program. It will be at 7.22 am tomorrow morning I understand - for four minutes! Post-Postscrip: Not to mentio...
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In the light of Obama's latest wins , here's Gary Hart arguing for Obama in much the same terms I would . Hart was the 'Obama' candidate against Mondale in 1984 and the Democrats showed their now famous ability to pick a loser. Whether Obama will be much good or not is anyone'...
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I'm beginning to have serious reservations about whether we did the right thing in letting these Love Gods loose on Samantha Brett's unsuspecting lovelorn readers. Poor Shami , tender ego shrivelled and crushed underfoot! But did that stop our Love Gods? Oyster and bacon nibbl...
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Let me count the ways. The way already receiving attention is the narrowness of the base of the action of monetary policy. Lots of households don't get squeezed by monetary policy. A small number with interest income earn more. Lots of families pay more interest but a lot have...
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I delayed looking at this post for a month over the Christmas break because of bandwidth restrictions. But now I can recommend you play these two YouTube videos. Dani Rodrik's immediate point is that formal rule making and enforcement isn't necessarily a step up from informal...
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As Lateral Economics proposed in 2006 if you're looking for taxes to cut to maximise growth, you can't go past cutting company tax rates. Now the research has been updated by this NBER working paper . Simeon Djankov, Tim Ganser, Caralee McLiesh, Rita Ramalho, Andrei Shleifer N...
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Troppo regular Tony Harris published an op ed on Tuesday that set the cat amongst the pigeons. That's for reasons you'll appreciate when you read the piece. It was an interesting business. A software glitch saw the decimal points in Tony's description of the state of the CPI a...
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As members of the coalition opposition struggle with finding the right words in response to Mr. Rudds plan to say sorry, it is pleasing to see that every man and his dog is pitching in and offering their own form of words to help them out of this pickle. To add my support to t...
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Sweeney Tanner, demon budget barber ... Everybody is giving advice to the Rudd Government on how it can best increase its budget surplus. I doubt that really draconian measures are needed as the economy will be slowing down markedly within the next 18 months without any help f...
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Photo by Ohmann Alianne on Flickr Anyone familiar with the findings of political scientists like Philip Converse , about the spectacular combination of profound ignorance and political disinterest of most voters, will be unsurprised by this story on Yahoo! News: LONDON (AFP) -...
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From today's Fin. Tax cuts better off in super As you read this, bevies of bureaucrats are busily building an inflation strategy. Virtually all the medicine theyll prescribe will have a nasty taste. We dont like spending cuts and revenue increases. But one option could pull a...
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Probably too late to change their names by deed poll. From wesh on Flickr - nothing to do with this post, but it got your attention! Ever since I started blogging in 2002 I've tended to concentrate almost exclusively on reading and interacting with other Australian blogs. It i...
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Well, last week's inaugural edition of Ask Troppo's Love Gods seemed to go well. I certainly haven't heard from our supplicant reader Gen, so can only assume she was well satisfied with the advice our Love Gods gave her. Unfortunately, one of our putative Love Gods in Nabakov...
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Tony Harris and I were discussing the issue of why the NSW economy has performed so much worse than the Victorian economy. I'm not sure of the answer, though it seems to me that under both the ALP and the Libs Victoria has had better government - better leaders and a better bu...
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A further rise in cash interest rates will cause great pain to many low income families at a time of mounting mortgage stress but the Reserve Bank is only interested in economic arguments so here are three reasons why it should wait a few months. * credit market are still brit...
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Sullivan+Strumpf has a lot of groovy artists on its lists. Their website has some groovy pictures and objects they've run up. I've put them over the fold for those who are interested - and so that those who aren't don't chew up bandwidth.
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Coming out in March 2008 I've just finished reading American Fascists , in which the famous American war correspondent Chris Hedges presents a deeply unpleasant portrait of the Christian Right. Much of the story will be unsurprising to readers who've been paying attention to t...
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As you can see from the video above, there was no love lost between probable chess cheat Veselin Topalov and his nemisis in a recent world championship battle, Vladimir Kramnik. Anyway, though in previous comps Topalov looks like he's managed to pick up the odd surreptitious s...
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Contrarian columnist Michael Duffy has a great column in yesterday's SMH. I wonder when the tipping point will come and people will start to see at least some of the emperor through those new clothes of his. But I was aching for one more dot point, in the article, of at least...
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The Cato Institute strives to be the respectable face of American libertarianism. It's a difficult role to maintain in a movement with more than its fair share of eccentrics, extremists and conspiracy theorists. Earlier this month Dom Armentano , a Cato adjunct scholar, sugges...
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Andrew Norton mourns the passing of the Bulletin : The Bulletin hasn't had a niche for a long time now. While it still occasionally broke stories, on a week-by-week basis it wasn't providing much you could not find more promptly and at lower cost in the newspapers. I haven’t b...
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You'd think that people would have had enough of silly false dichotomies. I look around me and I see it isn't so. I look at columns like this one by Geoffrey Barker. In which he juxtaposes 'government expenditure' (good) with equity and fiscal conservatism (bad) with efficienc...
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Ron Tandberg has done cleverer cartoons. He's done funnier ones. But somehow I've never seen a cartoon that's more Tandberg than this one. The master of the simple idea. And living national treasure.
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Where did all those "extraordinarily, unbelievably, stunningly gorgeous" Russian women come from, asks Anne Applebaum . If you walked into any "well-appointed drawing room, dining room, or restaurant in London" around 1995 there they were, she says. But in the 1970s and 80s, t...
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I've praised the Asus Eee PC before (though not its peculiar marketing name) as the direction I've been hoping portable computing would take for some time. It seems to have been a success and now they're unbundling their way to success it seems. Three new models are on the way...
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The report of the Campbell Committee* on Australias Financial System (1981) paved the way for financial deregulation of credit flows, interest rates and exchange rates. But it also recognized that a financial system could not operate effectively, let alone efficiently, unless...
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Seamus C's post proposing popular elections for Australian of the Year raises the intriguing possibility of a similar mechanism for appointment of a rather more important official Australian role, namely that of Governor-General. There was speculation only a week or so ago tha...
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[ Seamus C, a new Club Troppo contributor whose first piece is published below, is an Australian working overseas, and has interests and expertise in public policy areas - KP ] Would this man have won a popular election for Australian of the Year? Sadly, as Foundation Presiden...
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Australia, Australia, we think of you each day, Australia, Australia, at work and at play, we think of you in the evening and in the morning too, we even wake at midnight so we can think of you. Australia, Australia, we love you from the heart, the liver, the kidneys, the gibl...
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Pretty interesting paper . Abstract: Over time, increases in hours of work per capita have created the intuitively plausible notion that there is less time available to pursue social interactions. The specific question addressed in this paper is the effect of hours of work on...
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A while back, I came upon Beth Noveck who is doing some interesting things in trying to bring the techniques and possibilities of Web 2.0 to government. For instance in addition to theorising at American law journal article length about ways of moving governments into the Web...
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This week the Twentieth Century's seventh greatest mass murderer died a dignified death in his bed, amidst tributes from Western leaders. According to The Washington Post , President Bush sent his regrets over Suharto's death. "President Bush expresses his condolences to the p...
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Who's been watching Bob the Builder ? I've got to say I'm loving this. The speeches just get better. This guy can run up or get run up a hell of a speech and read an autocue like there's no tomorrow Aflac <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/abbie2637/web/free-polyphonic-ri...
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Juno is a great movie -- but there's something a little odd about the music. So you haven't seen the film? It's about a 16 year old girl called Juno who gets herself pregnant. And yes ... I can hear you. You're saying, "Gets HERSELF pregnant! Isn't there some male person who's...
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In the latest edition of Dissent , Jesse Larner has a leftist take on libertarian icon Friedrich Hayek . He " talks about what Hayek gets right, what he gets wrong, and where he is just a crackpot ". Larner joins a growing list of leftist writers and thinkers who share Hayek's...
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Sometimes I'm overcome with a feeling that Club Troppo's tone is rather too uniformly earnest and worthy. Dr Troppo's posts sometimes help to dispel the ennui, but I can't help thinking more is needed. There's so much more to life than politics, law and economics. Love and rel...
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The Democrats seem to be going to their usual lengths to lose the next election, bogging their own primary down in squabbles between Hillary and Obama which has both of them at their worst for reasons explained by Clive Crook . From my distance I wouldn't know, but I think Kar...
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A while back I posted a brief endorsement of a Guy Rundle piece, which brought forth a reference to another essay by Rundle . I disagree - sometimes to the point of strong irritation with some of the things he says, especially in the last half of the piece, but I recommend it...
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Unemployment fell as low as 4.3% of the work force in December 2007 the lowest rate for 30 years. While there is still much hidden unemployment (under-employed and discouraged workers), this too has been falling. Should we rejoice or have we been living in a fools paradise? Is...
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Paddy McGuinness died this morning . He was 69. As a columnist and editor McGuinness thrived on controversy. As Matthew Ricketson wrote , he was "loved and loathed in roughly equal measure, and that is the point -- and the trick -- with such columnists." At Catallaxy, Jason So...
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I was staying in an FAQ hotel in Adelaide last week and was asked to pay for WiFi access. Fortunately I'd brought my own wireless broadband connection (which is much more expensive using as it does the mobile telephony infrastructure rather than wires and WiFi) so I didn't hav...
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What a wonderful guy. Might we all have such quiet modesty, magnanimity and achievement written on our face when we're getting on a little. Heartfelt congratulations to David Bussau on his long overdue recognition - he has just been made Senior Australian of the Year. He is a...
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If you've ever been quoted out of context by journalist you'll know what it's like to be a fictional character. As a therapist to troubled inhabitants of fictional works, I see what happens when authors abuse characters who are often finer human beings than themselves . The in...
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I am always happy to assist readers in distress. Recently I received this letter. Dear Dr Troppo, Despite a protective screen of refractor rays, my gulch has been invaded by a small army of talking tin cans with sink plungers for hands. The leader of these metallic looters say...
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Keiren Healy at Crooked Timber talks about the ways in which disciplinary orientations can bugger up sensible problem solving opportunities in a policy area in which he has specialised - organ donation. The claim that presumed consent systems perform better than informed conse...
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PPE, the combined undergraduate course of philosophy, politics and economics became popular in Oxford in the early part of the twentieth century. It acquired the name "Modern Greats" by analogy with "Greats" or classics which was ancient history, philosophy and languages which...
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One of Australian blogging's pioneers Tim Blair has announced that he has bowel cancer and is to have major surgery tomorrow. Tim has always been a combative and even divisive blogosphere figure, but it isn't so widely known that he has often provided considerable behind the s...
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The most amazing chess player there ever was has just died. The idea of some link between madness and genius is probably a bit hackneyed, and in chess, I can't think of any other geniuses who were that crazy mad, but we sure got a doozy in Bobby. It's surprising more chess cha...
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There have been three important developments since my last posting a statement by Federal Reserve chairman Bernanke; a policy preview by President Bush; and a comment by RBA Governor, Glenn Stevens. In this posting I also explore policy options for Australia if the worst case...
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It is now widely expected that the world economy will slow down in 2008 and could start to affect Australias own economic vitality in 2008/9. A mild economic slow down in Australia would not be a bad thing. It would help relieve the skills shortages, dampen wage-price pressure...
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Things have been a little dull over the holiday period. So dull, in fact, that I've been picking through my receptionist's collection of novels. First there was that book everyone's been chattering about recently -- Ian McEwan's Atonement . The second book in her pile was Jona...
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Guy Rundle's op edlets in Crikey! often annoy me - they're too bombastic and self assured for my taste, though perhaps the extreme limitations of the genre - the shortness of the articles - is part of the explanation. In any event, I thought this essay from Arena was terrific...
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The receptionist's fingers paused over the keyboard. The heat was making it difficult to think and the din of hundreds of amorous black cicadas wasn't helping. She wanted to show Mr Farrell how completely he'd misunderstood Ian McEwan's novel , but at the same time she didn't...
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One of the clichés of industry policy from the late 1970s on is that inward orientation is to be avoided - outward or export oriented policy is the go. There are lots of good reasons for this. We didn't see those reasons and then failed to notice the empirical evidence that wa...
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As I took my seat to watch Atonement last night, I was thinking that I should have read the book first, and the feeling was even stronger by the time I walked out. It was beautifully filmed, and mostly very well acted. The chemistry between Keira Knightly and James McAvoy was...
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I heard Debra Dickerson for the first time on a summer replay of a Counterpoint program I'd not heard during the year. She wrote a book published in 2004 or thereabouts entitled The end of blackness. I wondered if Noel Pearson might have forgotten to acknowledge her in an essa...
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My friend George has been traveling in East Africa since October, starting in Ethiopia. He happened to be in Kenya for the elections, and his first-hand account of that fiasco, which he emailed to a few friends, deserves a wider audience. He wrote some illuminating notes on Et...
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Find out if you want to by clicking through when the word appears in this rather fun review of Christopher Hitchens. Not that Christopher is either my cup of tea or especially interesting. But he is quite fun to watch - so long as you don't devote much time to it!
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Let's start by admiting that a black man being banned for three matches for calling a dark brown Australian man a monkey is pretty peculiar. Next will be Ricky Ponting being banned for calling an English player a pommy bastard. Couldn't John Howard, cricket tragic and implacab...
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From Dani Rodrik's weblog . . . . As I was reading a paper by Raghu Rajan, for which I am the discussant in the annual meetings of the American Economics Association, I realized how much I had moved away from this kind of literature. Raghu's paper is squarely in that "old" pol...
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Via Patrick's comment on an earlier thread, and thence from Tyler Cowen's recommendation of "one of the best hour-wasters you will get this year", I happened upon a credo which I reproduce below. It's available on this page though it's amongst other posts many of which are fan...
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I hereby announce 'Best Blog Posts of 2007', an anthology of writing from Australian independent blogs over the past year, which began appearing at On Line Opinion on 2 January. The selection and republication of the blog posts in this series is a collaboration between On Line...
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