Club Troppo

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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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