Club Troppo

Patriotic Sydney siders who want to know how a simple bit of tax policy can put a bit of rocket fuel in our economy should pop along to the Reserve Bank at 12.45 for an explanation at an Economics Society of NSW function. I'll be doing a presentation Are you still feeling luck...

Continue reading →

Perhaps as long as twenty five years ago certainly more than twenty years ago I was in Venice, on a trip to touristy Murano and I bought a little statuette of an eighteenth century fellow sitting at his desk, wig atop his head, quiver in hand writing on a scroll, a vase of ink...

Continue reading →

Continue reading →

Continue reading →

From Crikey! McGauchie loves Sol, shareholders not so much Adam Schwab writes: It was certainly fun while it lasted. This morning, Telstra confirmed the worst-kept secret in corporate Australia, announcing that CEO Sol Trujillo was resigning his role and returning to the Unite...

Continue reading →

Regular readers won't be surprised that I had another crack at this topic. The time seemed right. From a column published today in the Age . Call it the audacity of hope. In the political playbook of George W. Bushs advisor and confidant Karl Rove, you go after your enemy wher...

Continue reading →

Last Sunday, on the same opinion page where John Hewson excoriated Peter Costello, Kerry-Anne Walsh wrote a piece defending Julie Bishop , and accusing her detractors of double standards. Bishop wasn't a bad performer. Yes, she made a few stumbles but the one that was most oft...

Continue reading →

Continue reading →

Continue reading →

If you go to this page on the BBC's website in the next few days, or if you arrive in the next month or so if you download this file (mp3), you will hear an extraordinary interview. It is with a softly spoken Canadian farmer. He euthanased his 12 year old daughter who suffered...

Continue reading →

Journalists are ranked as the least trustworthy profession according to a recent UK poll by Ipsos MORI . While 92% of respondents said that they generally trusted doctors to tell the truth, only 19% said that they trusted journalists. At 60%, even the "ordinary man or woman in...

Continue reading →

I had to laugh. Tips from Wall Street. Very funny. At just $16.47 it's a steal - no pun intended. We've noticed that customers who have purchased or rated Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky have also purchased Expect to Win: Prov...

Continue reading →

Apologies to Nicholas, who I've just discovered has already reviewed this film . But I know he'll be consoled by the knowledge that readers will appreciate his wisdom and sobriety all the more when contrasted with my naive gushings. ----------------------------------- I saw An...

Continue reading →

Here's today's column in the Fin. They say you should choose your parents wisely. Right now that makes me think of our car makers. Its so easy to put off upgrading your car, that just the anticipation of hard times can devastate new car sales. And this time its serious because...

Continue reading →

A friend send me this cartoon.

Continue reading →

Continue reading →

I was underwhelmed I'm afraid. Here are a couple of good reviews which say the film is good. So go ahead and don't believe me. But for me this was (yet another) Hollywood film with good acting covering up a film that didn't quite do it for me. (Others include the other Kate Wi...

Continue reading →

Here is a piece by Mike Steketee on Superannuation . He lists all the horrific inequities noted by Darren Wickham, arising from our present superannuation arrangements. For example: contributions to super are taxed at a flat 15 per cent; this provides no tax break at all for l...

Continue reading →

Over at Penguin Unearthed . Extreme distributions 20 February, 2009 by penguinunearthed John Connor , CEO of the Climate Institute , made a speech today talking about bushfires. Ive been pondering one of his key points for the last two weeks, ever since the bushfires . Climate...

Continue reading →

And no exception here . CAMBRIDGE Capitalism is in the throes of its most severe crisis in many decades. A combination of deep recession, global economic dislocations, and effective nationalization of large swathes of the financial sector in the worlds advanced economies has d...

Continue reading →