Posts tagged…Australia
Discounting the Intergenerational Report
Fri, Feb 12 2010"[H]ow often does the IGR [Intergenerational Report], in five pages vaunting public investment in infrastructure, use the term 'cost benefit analysis'? Not once. Clearly, suggesting that public investment only be undertaken when the benefits exceed the costs is no longer politically correct." Extract from Henry Ergas in The AustralianHenry Ergas is—as ever—right on the money. The 2010 IGR has…
Read more…Good idea or insidious threat?
Tue, Dec 08 2009When an economy has trade leverage, the threat of discriminatory duties need not be simple protectionism.
"The US can help China make the necessary adjustments toward a reduction in imbalances by adopting a uniform tariff of 10 per cent on all Chinese imports, based on their values when they enter the US. Six months after the establishment of this tariff, the rate would increase by one percentage…
Agriculture in the AUSFTA
Wed, Aug 26 2009
The first few slides are charts of current data showing a surprisingly poor performance of Australian exports to the USA in the first five years of the implementation period of the free-trade area. The…
The Emissisions Trading bill madness
Mon, Aug 10 2009The text of my email to all Victorian senators at the start of the week in which the bill comes to the Senate.
Dear Senator,
As a Victorian constitutent, I urge you to oppose the wasteful, ineffective "Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme" legislation. There is no plausible case for concern about global warming which has been mild (0.5 deg per century since 1850s) and has presently stopped. The…
Twitter test of defense policy
Tue, May 05 2009The first rule of marketing is simplify and exaggerate. Or, in my trade: shorten and sharpen. Go straight to the point and tell it plainly.
Twitter's one-forty byte limit is a tough test: a rhetorical sieve. Like a map or a model, a tweet holds only what you can see at a glance.
Here's my idea: when a proposal is too hard to grasp, twitter-test it. Let's try it out on the big White Paper on…
Strategic outlook for Australia
Mon, Apr 13 2009Defense must have an evidence-basis, just like all other policies. Allowing alarming 'long-tail' scenarios, such as an aggressive Chinese military posture, to drive policy—if that is what the Defense planners have in mind—is like gambling, not strategic planning. We don't have the resources to 'over-insure against a remote…risk', any more than Robert Gates does.
Our defense outlook is benign by…
Australian share market fall compared
Thu, Apr 02 2009"The most obvious manifestation to the general public of the impact of the financial crisis on Australia has been the decline in the local stock market. From its peak in November 2007 to the lows reached earlier this month, the local market declined by 54 per cent. This fall compares to the peak to trough decline of 57 per cent in the US market, 61 per cent in Europe and 60 per cent in the…
Nationalism and foreign investment policy
Mon, Feb 16 2009In today's Fairfax press, Beijing correspondent John Garnaut provides some much-needed facts to hose-down the economic nationalism being whipped up by some investment advisors and politicians over the Rio asset sale to Chinalco. Garnaut's story about the relationships of Chinalco and Chinese steel giant BaoSteel and about the pressures on the government fund backing the loans to Chinalco confirm Little evidence fires due to warming
Tue, Feb 10 2009
The Financial Times reports that Mr Kevin Hennessy, a principal research scientist at CSIRO and a contributing author on the IPCC's reports, claims "Continued increases in greenhouse gases will lead to further warming and drier conditions in southern Australia, so the [fire] risks are likely to slightly worsen"
If Mr Hennessy is relying on the same assessments as he made in the 'Drought…
Aus exports at current prices
Mon, Dec 08 2008
Speaking of unsustainable trends …
Share the love
Mon, Nov 17 2008According to the Reserve Bank's deputy Governor:
"The prospective earnings yield on Australian shares now stands at 11 per cent, almost double the long-term average…When the yield has risen to these levels in the past, the return on shares over the subsequent 10 years has almost always been well above average" David Uren in The AustralianHere's the Governor's speech.
Australian food trade barriers revealed
Wed, Aug 13 2008The World Bank's World Trade Indicators (WTI) are a relatively new, but very powerful, way of describing global trade policies and regulations. Their simplified metrics help to reveal the 'big picture' that emerges from a blizzard of trade and tariff data collected by the UN and WTO. Their method is theoretically sound but—as always—has limits and perspectives that need some interpretive…