Life, Culture and Politics from BrisVegas
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Larvatus Prodeo is an Australian group blog which discusses politics, sociology, culture, life, religion and science from a left of centre perspective. more»
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And not forgetting the very active role that women play in scandanavian politics…
Yes there are better ways, than simply giving ‘tax cuts’. But Rudd knows he only gets one chance and he is not going to blow it. A pity.
Some fair points are in that piece, Mark, but you’re better than the cheap shot re: reforms in New Zealand. It is not true that real wages, growth, etc. have stagnated since those reforms were implemented. Let’s not forget that New Zealand was, by 1984, an economic basketcase of truly Muldoonian proportions. The neoliberal reform programme in NZ mirrored, to a large extent, the neoliberal reform programme of Hawke and Keating, the guys for whom you persistently (and quite rightly) claim a large part of Australia’s current prosperity.
Cheers
BBB
What do you expect out of someone who suggests by voting for his leadership its the future!? So is it some sort of reworked words as symbols that we arent understanding. TAX CUTS backwards… stuck exit at..which implies tit for tat,endless chat empty seats exit stage right!? Tea axe..sea you tea Ness.Cax Tuts, KING TUTS cacks!? Tux Cats..they did it their way fat cats.Use Edo as References.Tas the mania,even if you are sitting on it,CU exit,mania exit ,mad rush. Spur of the moment policy…that is what it is, that is how it will stay.No strays!
BBB, NZ’ performance on almost all indicators has lagged significantly behind ours, and their version of “global integration” was much more radical than ours. I’ll accept that they were perhaps more extreme in their protectionism than us and also had a much less balanced economy prior to Lange.
Looks like Howard is about to exit with his economics credentials in tatters.
New Zealand is small and does not have the cushion of valuable resources that both Norway and Australia enjoy. Mostly they grow food and try and sell it to the world. We all know that is a tough gig with agricultural subsidies and protectionism the norm.
New Zealand may well have dropped behind Australia, but things are looking up and their productivity performance is as good as, if not slightly better than, Australia lately. Well according to these figures.
This paper seems a pretty good description of the point you are trying to make I think:
i.e. the National Government’s radical Employment Contracts Act was not beneficial for labour productivity in the NZ economy.
The penchant for privatisation of natural monopolies like electricty and rail has also bitten them on the bum. The real vandalism in this regard was perpetrated by the right(er) wing National Governments however.
(I have no figures for this, I just know my Mum pays horrendous amounts for her power and it just keeps rising steeply all the time).
Maybe Mark, but I wouldn’t count on it.
‘Rational economics’ ‘Low tax governments’ ‘Budget surpluses’ are all things that were mainly initiated in the Anglosphere. The 1980′s with Reagan and Thatcher really shifted the paradigms there. When politicians talked about low tax governments they would vouch that ‘it was done everywhere else in the world’. Everywhere else in the world that speaks English.
It is unfortunate. But Rudd had no choice in matching the Government’s tax cuts with some education embellishment around the edges.
Why? because our obtuse, uninfomed media would have banged on about ‘Rudd not matching the government on tax’. And that would have been the story all throughout the campaign.
“Turn around the Tampa & head to Norway”?
This should receive a good hearing in rural areas, as Norway subsidises the living daylights out of their farming sector.
Bring it on! Bigtime subsidies and protection for farmers, Norwegian style! Ramp up the rural productivity, Norwegian style!
New Zealand was using innovative marketing of food exports long before Australia – early 60′s at least. They knew their special protected place in the UK economy (“Canterbury lamb”) wasn’t going to last. Necessity was truly the mother of invention.
I admire their Kiwi-fruit-from-Chinese-Gooseberry ploy. Has Australia ever tried (or succeeded with) such a hoax? Sorry: re-branding.
The Australian and NZ economies are so different, gee -it’s like comparing Australia with a Scandinavian country or Ecuador.
Kamate, kamate!
“In an alternative political universe, Rudd could really have ‘ensured prosperity beyond the resources boom.’ And, I strongly suspect, have won the election on such a platform.”
It would have been nice to think so Mark.
Labor has 16 seats to catch up. Generally, a pretty hostile media coverage. Even, bucketloads of shite from those who would prefer him to Howard.
Remembering also, the dirty politics the lib team has played so far, in this election, and given what we know they are capable of ……..
Rudd may even save us from a total political breakdown.
Off you go, then.
Mark, there’s one key word missing from your post, and this thread for that matter: OIL.
Norway is the world’s third largest exporter of oil, and per capita it produces more oil than Saudi Arabia or the UAE.
I’m glad you trust the OECD’s work, however, and will have noted in your reading of the survey their commentary:
So 25% of Norwegian value added comes from oil. By comparison, mining represents only around 5-6% of Australian GDP. Clearly you can’t compare one resource boom with the other.
In fact, so large has been the distortionary impact of the oil sector on the Norwegian economy, the OECD concluded that:
Natural endowment: 1
Socialism: 0
Comparing Australia to Norway is a pointless exercise.
Norway, eh? Do they have a 457 visa program? Might be useful if the election goes the wrong way…
At the other extreme, I find it useful to compare Australia’s current state to that of various US island territories scattered about the globe. The list includes:
1. Guam:
2. American Samoa:
All territory under the control of the US federal government is considered part of the “United States” for purposes of law. That does not include Iraq (yet) or Australia (yet). Other parts of the world, like Hawai’i, have been successfully integrated with a minimum of fuss. The Constitution of the United States states:
We might yet find ourselves on that list of US territories… IF the election goes the wrong way.
Tintin, I think Mark’s link talked about “an economy focused heavily on resources” – obviously they are not exporting snow!
People who actually read the links: 1
Snarks: 0
I’m well aware of the importance of oil to the Norwegian economy, Fyodor, as you’d be well aware of the way in which income from the resources boom has knock-on effects through the Australian economy. I’m sure you also noted that I didn’t claim that the two countries were comparable in all respects, but that the main point of comparison I was interested in was a differing attitude towards the disposition of boom time surpluses. I note that Alan Mitchell was making a very similar argument to Nick Gruen’s point about the surplus in today’s Fin – what the Howard government have been doing (and what Rudd has locked us into) runs quite contrary to “economics 101″ as Rudd is fond of calling it.
Gandhi, read my comment and acquaint yourself with the facts. I read the OECD report Mark linked to; you didn’t.
Mark, you said:
The reality, as I’ve demonstrated, is that Norway’s resource boom dwarfs our so massively in proportional terms that any comparison you wanted to make was pointless.
Rudd could not promise anything like what you’re describing, because the money just isn’t there.
I’m not sure if you’re being deliberately obtuse, Fyodor. It may not be on the same scale but add up the billions in surpluses that have gone on tax cuts and misdirected spending, and I think you’ll find there’s a sizeable sum in the potential kitty!
What, you mean after running budget surpluses, repaying Commonwealth debt and establishing the Future Fund? Those aren’t sizeable enough for you?
The way you carry on you’d think high taxes were a good thing. We can argue as much as you like about how best to spend the budget, but let’s stop kidding your good self that Norway’s oil-fed welfare state is achievable in Australia. Not gonna happen.
It strikes me from that comment that you haven’t really read either my post or my last comment so I don’t think there’s much point carrying on a discussion. I specifically said that I didn’t think it practicable to achieve a Scandinavian style welfare state in Australia and my whole point is to argue for other priorities than “running budget surpluses, repaying Commonwealth debt and establishing the Future Fund?”
I’m sure there’s a stoush happening somewhere on the intertubes about fractional reserve banking or something if you’re in that sort of mood…
Mark, I think the problem with all of this is that you don’t need to rely on the Norwegian example to make any of the points that you are making (which to be fair are pretty valid). So setting it up as a comparison might not have been that worthwhile.
As an aside, I thought the Norwegians were squirelling away all of their oil money in overseas equities to offset future welfare liabilities (ie. not spending it on schools and hospitals and infrastructure). That is not unlike the reasoning behind the Future Fund, which you cite with apparent disapproval.
Cheers
BBB
Ah.
So your “whole point” is to argue for other priorities than, say, the Future Fund? You do, realise, don’t you, that Nicholas Gruen was referring directly to Norway’s equivalent of the Future Fund? No, thought not.
Oh, c’mon, Mark. Don’t be like that. Better luck next time; I suggest Bahrain.
Mark There is a sizeable sum being locked away in th Future Fund, and OI expect that if surpluses continue to pile up they will be locked away into that and similar funds.
More importantly, and Keating deserves the credit for this, not Howard, the introduction compulsory industry based superannuation has led to the accumulation of massive reserves. It is, to put it mildly, unfotunate that the Libs didn’t follow up on increasing the employer contribution to those funds to lift it to 15 or 18% (or even, ideally, 21%) over time as a device to trade off against wage increases as it is a non-inflationary way of distributing the benefits of economic growth across the workforce, as well as reducing the Federal Government’s social security commitment in the future as the population greys.
You’re a master of snark, aren’t you Fyodor? But not so good at close reading. I’m well aware of what Nick’s talking about but the objects of the Norwegian fund (as BBB indicates) and its dimensions are both substantially different from the “Future Fund”. I don’t happen to regard squirrelling money away to pay for future public service pensions as particularly worthy, and what I took Nick to be arguing was that far more of the surpluses should be similarly invested and indeed some of what has gone on tax cuts. As to its purposes, BBB is right about Norway but that’s not to say that other purposes may not be appropriate in the Australian context.
I hope that’s clear. How about I agree that you’re just teh smartest fellow on the intertubes and we leave it at that? I’d prefer to discuss the substantive point rather than endlessly responding to your attempts to find a “gotcha” moment. Maybe not all blog posts written in haste spell out the complete argument. But those who are not looking to misconstrue it can normally get the meaning.
The only such rebranding which comes to mind has been done TO Australia by the USA, with “Queensland” Nut being usurped by “Macadamia” Nut.
Agreed, GregM. Though that presupposes a different sort of wage system in a way.
Mark, I don’t see that the objective of the Future Fund IS substantially different from the Oljefondet. As BBB accurately noted, they’re both designed to squirrel away government revenue for future expenditure. You seem to be opposed to the Future Fund because its principal, albeit unworthy, purpose is to pay out government pension obligations, but this is also an objective of the Oljefondet (its formal name is The Government Pension Fund of Norway).
So, on the one hand you think we should follow Nick’s advice and model ourselves on Norway, but when it comes to the “close reading” of what the Norwegian example has to teach us, you recoil in horror. Make up your mind.
I also hope it’s clear to you, Mark, that I HAVE been discussing the substantive points of your post, namely: a) Norway’s a bad comparison for Australia given the disparity in magnitude of their respective resource booms; and b) you evidently disagree with Norway’s course of action anyway. If you don’t think that’s substantive engagement you’re kidding yourself.
As for the “gotcha moments” and “snark”, you’re no apprentice yourself, are ya?
“I don’t happen to regard squirrelling money away to pay for future public service pensions as particularly worthy… ”
How big is the liability ( guesses are perfectly acceptable answers ) for future public servant pensions?
Stephen Mayne used to mention this frequently as being huge and even larger than than the future fund could become.
The other point about superannuation invested in shares is that stock markets are prone to long term corrections once inflation emerges. The 70′s was such a decade and we all need to hope that people remember that prices go up and down – relevant if your redeeming your investment after 5 poor years.
BBB,
So how do we account for around 200,000 Kiwis working in this country? When I ask those that have fetched up in my industry why they are here, they all say the same thing-”I like getting paid penal rates [their term for penalty rates] which were abolished when the Employment Contracts Act came in”.
Now I am be a naif in these matters, but it appears that for some unaccountable reason, these people didn’t like having their wages cut, they still don’t think they would be better off if they returned to New Zealand, (since they all agree they will go back “when I have made enough money”) and they appear to be very very clear in their own minds at least, about the meaning of ‘industrial reforms designed to make labour markets flexible’.
In fact their views are so clear that they are always invited to explain to the people with whom they work, exactly what the code words ‘flexible labour markets’ mean. The people they work with appear to get the picture very clearly. But again, they are simple people, and very likely misunderstand the beautiful symmetry of the 1:1 employment negotiation, and the long term benefits to ‘improved’ ratios in output shares that the ‘shock and awe’ of wage cuts, produce.
I sometimes wonder how these people are still permitted to vote really, but if Gerry Harvey gets his way, perhaps we can look forward to a more permanent solution to this unfortunate attachment to discredited notions of permitting the hired help to influence vital economic decisions. A good dose of wage cutting aimed at visa holders should send the right message eh?
And how is this relevant to the thread? (I’m not being snarky. I just don’t see how it is on-topic.)
BoredinHK, it was funded from the budget each year as it fell due, and the people criticising it in the columns of the Fin Review suggested there was never any problem continuing to do that. I gather the FF itself will have enough money in it to meet all the liability by early next year (from memory).
They can, under the CER Agreement (and they could, in practical terms before that agreement) move to Australia and live and work here without a visa.
They are paid higher wages here because we have a larger and more prosperous economy so can afford to pay them more.
Our economy is more prosperous, because we have a larger economy, we have greater economies of scale and because we are better endowed with resources and are experiencing a resources boom.
We have close to zero unemployment and skills shortages in many areas so they can easily get a job and if they don’t like the one they’ve got they can get another.
In the great scheme of things being paid penalty rates would be a small consideration.
Mark, this is from your article at New Matilda that you have linked this thread to:
Do you have any evidence (and I mean here published statistics) to demonstrate that real wages, growth and productivity in New Zealand are lower now than they were in 1984 when the NZ economic reforms began. Nothing I have ever read, and I follow economics enthusiastically, has supported what you have asserted, and in fact the rationale of those reforms was the then sclerotic state of the NZ economy, so if you have evidence to support your assertion would you please show us what it is.
Sorry, GregM, I had intended to suggest that they were all significantly behind the relevant Australian measures. However it appears that I’m wrong on growth which has recently outstripped ours so I was evidently relying on old data:
http://www.rbnz.govt.nz/speeches/0164460.html
I’ve corrected the PollieGraph post accordingly.
There’s an interesting historical review here:
http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/Singleton.NZ
Great post, however, I’d argue that Finland provides a better comparison point to help determine policy – about a decade ago they were in pretty poor shape and went all human-capital intensive: and now look at them. And they are doing this WITHOUT a huge resources windfall.
Norway’s equivalent of the FutureFund is being put to better use than pensions, and anyway, Norway’s current account and budget surpluses (14.2% and 18.9% of GDP) The Economist 2007-10-18 are much better than our 5.7% current account DEFICIT and our meagre 1.4% budget surplus.
A quick look down The Economist weekly indicators shows that Howard/Costello claims to economic brilliance are rubbish, and depend on only one or two indicators, and only comparing Oz to Oz. I dare Howard/Costello lovers to compare our figures with other countries – they’d realize Howard/Costello are near the bottom of the class compared to the Nordics.
And that may be the very point you want to make Mark, which makes Norway (which is, because of its immense oil exports not an appropriate comparison) irrelevant, that Australia, because it didn’t make the right capacity-growing decisions early in its boom, such as investments in infrastructure and in human resource capacity (ie education and training) is now confronting the limits of growth in its economy.
If the UnZudders can get this right and we can’t, given our immensely greater advantages, we really have a major economic policy problem.
Indeed we do, GregM.
What was interesting about the Ross Gittins article in the SMH today (which Mark mentioned in his post) was the point he made about Howard ruling from the political grave. Getting rid of Howard in corporeal form is proving to be about as hard as eradicating blackberries and that’s the easy bit. The dog-whistle politics, the racism, the hoarding up of surpluses to the detriment of education and national infrastructure, the orgies of vote-buying and frantic displays of startling last-minute policy work each election time and of course DON’T mention the trades and current accounts deficit…All of this has been white-anting Australia to the point of collapse. I wonder if history books will look back and recount all the damage that Howardism has wreaked on this country even after he has gone for a long, long time to come.
Maybe Ross Gittins is right about Kevin Rudd being as Razor said in a previous post ‘a filthy liberal’, or maybe he has had to employ a massive dose of homeopathic pragmatism towards an electorate dumbed down, cossetted and spoiled by 11 years of Howardism. I guess we’ll only know that if Rudd gets to be Prime Minister.
But even if Gittins is right, would anyone in their right mind still vote for Howard???? Given that Ross Gittins said at the beginning of Howard’s reign back in 1996 that he thought he would be a good prime minister, is his judgement all that spot-on?
Down and Out,
Mark provided the comparison with Norway, which some people obviously find rather extreme: I provided the comparison with minor US territories (as I said) “at the other extreme”.
BTW in all the (surprisingly uncritical) talk of the Future Fund, I would point out that it is basically a massive Private Equity fund, built on taxpayer money, without any moral constraints imposed on how or where that equity is used. Global “custody” and related “services” are provided to the fund (which is run by an Englishman) by Chicago-based Northern Trust. Surely there are better ways to spend our money closer to home? This to me is an outrageous example of Howard’s economic rationalism run amok.
That’s a bit extreme.
If our trade deficit is because we are importing capital goods from which we will derive future earnings then that is a good thing.
If our current account deficit (cost of current imports plus cost of debt for previous imports) is for capital goods from which we will derive future earnings then that is a good thing.
Even if the current account deficit is partly for consumption which is covered off from future earnings, that is not a problem.
The problem would be if we did not get the balance right.
There is no reason to not vote for him.
There just has to be a better reason to vote for Rudd.
I am afraid you are wrong there, at least in the views of those who work in jobs where being paid penalty rates means the difference between good pay and indifferent pay. It wouldn’t mean much if the additional and unsocial hours pay was incorporated into the base rate and paid for all purposes, but of course, that’s not the idea at all is it?
You really need to be careful in dismissing people’s lived experience of their own circumstances, and let me assure you, people do not like having their pay cut, are perfectly capable of understanding when it has been cut, and disagree vigorously with those who argue that reducing their income, in order to increase the notional incomes of not so notional ‘others’, makes good economic sense. I am perfectly aware New Zealand is a smaller economy than Australia’s. Size however, is not a proxy for incapacity in economic and social policy. Not only is it a low pay/low benefit country, but the result of the shock and awe of the ECA has been severe on both the composition of the labour force still living in New Zealand (since the largely young, unencumbered and those possessing marketable skills) upped sticks and moved to elsewhere and reduced its capacity for future growth and development. A complete and brutal wast of time, handled with vomit making sanctimony by those who never had to swallow the medicine so readily prescribed to those not in a position to resist.
.
GregM said:
I thought a fair bit of the current account deficit was driven by household debt:
I don’t have a reference, but I thought that household debt was being driven mainly by house prices increasing mortgages. So even though Alan Kohler thinks the debt is backed by assets I don’t think house prices are a particularly solid asset if the whole market goes south.
Thanks for that link Aidan. I agree that house prices aren’t a very solid asset if the market goes south as it would if there was a recession.
Yes that’s true for those who were in occupations that paid penalty rates. However a lot of the migration from Un Zud has been of professionals and skilled trades people etc for whom penalty rates were not a factor in their incomes. Ordinary time rates of pay in Australia have historically been about 25% above those in Un Zud, reflecting a larger, richer economy with a greater capacity to pay.
It is in economic policy. If you have a smaller economy per capita then you have less capacity to pay. Social policy has to ride on the back of economic policy otherwise you’d end up in the mess that led to Un Zud economic reforms of the 1980s.
boredinHK – if the Australian Stock Market is the only place you invest your superannuation fund then you deserve to get poor performance. A good Investment Manager is diversified across asset classes, markets, managers, sectors etc etc etc.
But, what would I know.. . . ?
Despite being a RWDB economic dry I fully support any move to increase the Superannuation Guarantee from 9% to 15% or more. I would like to see a 1% annual increase to at least 15%. If a busness can’t cope with that annually then they don’t deserve to be in business. And it might reduce potential wage inflation. I also think it should be paid for all employees – no exemptions as now exist, and there should be “look through” provisions for all sub-contractors that apply for the first 4 Contractees in any one financial year.
It could be done by transferring payroll tax, a regressive tax if ever there was one, over to employees’ superannuation accounts.
GregM:
No worries. Now I have read this:
So he is saying that the banks fund their mortgages exclusively out of the deposits they receive (multiplied by a mysterious factor which is of the order of 50-100?). Another source seems to claim that banks typically fund half their mortgage book from deposits but a company like RAMS which relied on the American credit market was caught seriously short with the sub-prime squeeze.
Clear as mud.
Thanks Aidan. That is why I am so enthusiastic about Keating’s Superannuation Guarantee (among other reasons- the development of a significant pool of local investment capital, reducing our economy’s dependence on foreign borrowing, is another)
It means that employees’ deferred savings are spread wider than just being locked into what they hope will be the appreciation of their house prices, which are likely to go pear-shaped in the event of a downturn in the economy.
And you are right about Costello’s comment. Clear as mud.
Aiden’s Costello quotes re the costs of mortgage financing by Australian banks are the maunderings of a man who has ceased to believe his own lies.
It is nonsense for Costello to allege that Australian banks fund business loans from one corpus of borrowed credit and housing loans from another corpus.
Money borrowed from overseas markets is lent by the bank from a general pool. Banks do not ration the destination of their lendings according to the source of capital.
Moreover, banks, like all businesses, attempt to maximise their rate of return on capital. If the cost of borrowing rises in one capital market, in fairly quick measure the bank’s interest rates will go up across the board.
If large discrepencies in rates of interest persist, then that is an indication of inefficiencies in the market. If the discrepencies are large enough, that is indicative of a structural crisis in credit markets.
And indeed, right now powerful central banks in the US and Europe are trying desperately to keep interest rates low by releasing an ocean of credit. Yet commercial banks are raising their rates because of a collapse of confidence. Even the most prudent borrower is trapped in this interest rate maelstrom.
The Fractional Reserve Ratio
[/stage whisper]
I believe teh evils of fractional reserve will be a big issue in Dobell this time round.
Noticed today that the LaRouchies have turned up in Dobell. If Birdie and the LaRouchies were on an equal footing in funding and resources compared to Labor and the Libs, the weeks up to November 24 would be quite entertaining and bearable.
Double Heh. You have learned much, Grasshopper.
Shaun, it’d almost be worth funding his campaign, just to get Birdy on national TV. It would probably kill the LDP stone dead, however.
I hadn’t realised the LDP was alive now.
Oh, they’re alive all right, still cunningly recruiting members one sociopath at a time.
Razor, I hadn’t made mention of any particular stock market , and agree that to spread risk many markets and asset classes should be invested in.
However inflation may be emerging in a couple of markets at the moment so the comment was made above.
And lets not even look at mainland China’s stock bubbles….
It is good to see fractional reserve banking getting into the discussion , we have all be silent on this point too long!
Perhaps Katz will find some errors here but RAMS wasn’t a deposit taking organisation and funded all it’s mortgages from the credit markets. These have been the markets particularly in the US which have been raising interest rates and the stories of woe mainly seem to involve such lenders.
As a comparison the big banks take deposits and then lend I think against these funds .They are allowed to issue 12-13x the value of these deposits.
(the 8% reserve ratio).
The trouble for RAMS is that no – one wants to be engaged with this type of credit at present ( offering the credit ) due to the extent of the downside risk being unknown so interest rates have risen to attract money but I gather the market had ceased to function at all. So now large institutions in the US( Merril Lynch , Bank of America ) are pooling vast sums to try and recreate the credit pool and defer the risks to another financial vehicle.
Sounds risky because it is basically shoving the problem sideways , giving it a new name and pretending everything is OK.
The markets is seems are always about confidence and if it can be restored with a bit of fancy packaging well so much the better.
Katz wrote “Moreover, banks, like all businesses, attempt to maximise their rate of return on capital. If the cost of borrowing rises in one capital market, in fairly quick measure the bank’s interest rates will go up across the board.
If large discrepencies in rates of interest persist, then that is an indication of inefficiencies in the market. If the discrepencies are large enough, that is indicative of a structural crisis in credit markets.”
Current japanese interest rates are very low and lots of money is being lent out of Japan. The risk then becomes exchange rate related. The carry trade is when you borrow in the low interest currency and buy a higher yield in a different currency – at the moment the $Aus and $NZ are favourites.
Discussions about whether this differential in interest rates between currencies is an indication of a structural crisis would soon evolve into an OT thread but is certainly an indication of some sort of malfuction in the credit markets.
Good analysis BIHK.
You’re correct about how exposure to potentially adverse foreign exchange movements is a further factor in determining the location and cost of imported credit.
The question of the behaviour of Japanese creditors is a fascinating one. It is quite true that interest rates in Japan have been scraping close to the zero mark for many years. Yet Japan continues to be an enormous source of credit fro export.
Japan’s major corporations continue to be mostly very profitable. moreover, profits are being repatriated to Japan from overseas operations of these companies.
And Japanese people are perhaps the most inveterately thrifty folk on earth. They are prepared to deposit their money into bank accounts that have about the same rate of return as putting it in a thong sock and bunging it under their futons. In other words, they are incredibly risk averse, possibly an effect of Japan’s own real estate meltdown in the early nineties and the Nikkei-Dow meltdown of the same time. It is sobering to recall that the ND was well over 40,000 at that time. It is well under half that figure in 2007.
The result of all this, of course, is that Japanese banks borrow their money for nothing and find it very easy to make a profit lending it for just about anything, so long as the risk of default is low.
Japanese people would be much richer if they took some risks. But on the other hand, they like to be able to sleep soundly.
Actually Birdy’s not so much standing for Dobell as taking it hostage.
Vote 1 Graeme Bird for Dobell or he’ll take you out the back and shoot you.
LEAVE YOUR CAR’S ENGINES ON ALL THE TIME
WE NEED TO WARM UPO THE PLANET
WE ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF A BRUTAL AND PULVERIZING ICE AGE
Don’t listen to the neoclassical filibustering Nazi Keynsians. They have stolen the DDT.
Vote 1
GMB
Plastics, Ben.
Plastics.