Capitalism

Poor old bankers. They keep telling us how tough it is for them with their funding costs expected to go up and how they will need to keep interest rates inflated.

And if the crying poor line isn’t enough the banks are quick to tell us that we are “picking on them” if we have a debate about how poorly they behave especially when the RBA changes the official interest rate.

Perhaps the “we’re doing it tough” line would carry some weight if the big banks didn’t show record profits year after year and if the banks’ CEOs weren’t getting such big pay packets year after year.

Continue reading "Time for an inquiry into this bunch of bankers" »

The Occupy protests are fighting for freedom, truth, justice, equality, and the right to wear tents as casual attire.

In the course of their battle they have faced many enemies; authoritarian authorities, policing police, the Melbourne weather. But now, it seems, they are to face their biggest enemy.

The enemy within.

Continue reading "Beware the dark forces occupying the Occupiers" »

One of the favoured chants of the Occupy Wall Street protesters is “This is what democracy looks like”. It’s an unusual definition of democracy, predicated on an impertinent belief that stopping people from going to work or abusing them for wearing suits is a central tenet of the democratic process.

The protests, which started in Lower Manhattan two months ago as a demonstration against corporate greed, have now been replicated in many of the bigger cities throughout the world. In Melbourne protesters and police scuffled a couple of times, with dog squads and mobs coming face to face. Protest sympathisers say the cops have been too rough, while the cops say the crowds had fair warning they would be dragged away if they didn’t leave voluntarily.

Martin Place in Sydney has been another venue for occupation, albeit an occupation which sputtered to an early halt when the anarcho-syndicalist catering collective failed to lay on any food for the demonstrators, many of whom promptly called it a night and went back to Mum and Dad’s in Paddington for dinner.

Continue reading "A left-wing protest against left-wing problems" »

I was absolutely intrigued by Sophie Mirabella’s attack on the growing “Occupy Wall Street” movement yesterday. In case you missed it, she basically dismissed these peaceful protesters as nothing more than a bunch of angry, anti-capitalist losers, looking to place the cost of their own failings into the hands of others:

“…There’s a strange dichotomy about this movement. These “occupiers” want other people to earn less, while presumably they are supported by the Government or benevolent families so they can spend their days creating sanitation problems in the street rather than earning a living themselves.

“They want other people to pay for their “free” college education. They want to hold others to account for the way they believe the world has failed them. There is an underlying sense of entitlement that just jars with the “other people are greedy bastards” protest.

Continue reading "Mirabella and the hypocrisy of the shoutier-than-thou" »

There are three golden rules in life: Nothing works, everything sucks and everyone you meet is either an idiot or plotting against you.

Being an optimistic and sunny sort of chap I have no problem accepting that this is all an unavoidable part of life and may even play a valuable role in shaping the human condition by teaching us humility through suffering. All I ask is that somebody pays for it.

It’s about time people who indifferently ruin other people’s lives every day were jailed alongside the criminals who do it on purpose.

Continue reading "My feet are wet, life sucks, and someone must PAY" »

Call me a miserable old piece of shit but I reckon it’s pretty weird that on the same day that some of Australia’s most committed virgins are queuing up in the cold outside the Apple Store for the launch of the iPad, in China, they’re queuing up on the roof to kill themselves at the factory that manufactures them.

If you want to know the story of globalisation, this one surely will do. On George St, Sydney, extra staff have been called in at the Apple Store to cope with the demand as hundreds of cashed-up geeks gather in a display of commodity fetishism which will hopefully be the subject of formal study by some sardonic anthropologist from the developing world.

Meanwhile, not that far north at the Foxconn factory in China’s Hunan province, nets have been installed on the roof after an 11th employee hurled himself to his death as the workers struggle to meet a deadline which has been created by our demand.

Continue reading "I’m dying to get one of those iPads they’re dying to make" »

There’s quite a menagerie in the stock market petting zoo. You’ve got your bulls, your bears and the occasional stag. Until now, though, you’ve never had PIGS.

In the past week, the PIGS have run rampant, trampling markets and joining CDO and CDS as acronyms guaranteed to strike fear into the hearts of investors. Like collateralised debt obligations and credit default swaps – those complex financial instruments that fuelled the GFC – anyone with shares needs to keep an eye on the PIGS.

Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain – collectively, and unkindly, derided as the PIGS – are in a fair degree of financial pain. All of them have budget deficits of more than 10 per cent of GDP, which experts reckon they will struggle to finance on wary international bond markets.

Continue reading "PIGS - the acronym that might fry your portfolio" »

A couple of years ago I received a furious telephone call from the chief executive officer of one of our biggest companies complaining about what he regarded as the ungrateful and insulting tone of The Daily Telegraph’s coverage of executive salaries.

The bloke had a bit of a point because, as he pointed out, his salary was extravagant on paper but had coincided with an unprecedented period of increased returns to shareholders. He’d also resisted the slash-and-burn approach to running his business, shielding workers from dismissal when it would have been the easiest way to achieve short-term savings in what was then a looming economic downturn.

The point I tried to make in the media’s defence was that rather than accusing us of being cheap populists, he should really convene a telephone hook-up with his fellow CEOs and ask them if their remuneration fell into the same category as his.

Continue reading "Give shareholders the real power to cut bosses’ pay" »