Posts tagged…Policy
Credible rejection of Chinese mine bid?
Sat, Mar 28 2009
It's difficult to call this, one way or the other. The generally xenophobic reaction to three recent, high-profile, Chinese resource bids (Rio, Ozminerals and Fortescue) is a good reason to be alert to a questionable 'national interest' claim.
Some people have smelled a rat in the Treasurer's announcement that he won't approve OzMetals' $2.6 bn sale to China's MinMetals, on national security…
Read more…Bans on the parallel import of books
Fri, Mar 27 2009
My submission to the Productivity Commission on their Draft Discussion paper on Parallel Importation of Books.
Dear Commissioners— Your assessment (Discussion Draft, ” Restrictions on the Parallel Importation of Books”) evaluates the cost of the Parallel Import Restrictions (PIRs) by considering their impacts on the authors, publishers and consumers of ‘trade books’; that is printed books. But…
Cap-and-trade to fund Obama’s tax cuts
Thu, Mar 26 2009This seems to be a plan to make the workers pay for the proposed tax cuts for the middle-class.
"The White House planned to finance the tax cuts with revenues from its proposed cap-and-trade scheme to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, but neither the House nor Senate budget committees are planning to include those measures in their legislation.
In his press conference on Tuesday evening, Mr Obama…
Public Policy and the Payments System
Thu, Mar 26 2009An important speech last night by the Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens arguing the need for more intervention in the private payments system—specifically the EFTPOS and ATM systems—to guide and accelerate the development of better technologies and standards by the competing Australian banks.
Stevens devotes much of his speech to a fascinating analysis of classic market failure due to…
An uptick in US demand
Thu, Mar 26 2009Hmm.. too early to be due to Obama's stimulus.
"The 3.4 percent increase [in demand for durable goods], the biggest gain in more than a year and the first in seven months, followed a 7.3 percent decrease in January that was larger than previously estimated, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. Excluding transportation equipment, orders gained 3.9 percent, the most since August 2005."…
Lu Kewen given his orders?
Tue, Mar 24 2009How could a meeting, at the PM's official residence, with a top Chinese politburo member be 'private'? This is a bizarre statement!
"[A] spokeswoman for Mr Rudd told The Australian: 'It was a private meeting between the two. It is not the Prime Minister of Australia's role to put out a press release announcing what every visiting politician is doing.'" Extract from The Australian
PC inquiry into anti-dumping
Mon, Mar 23 2009Some good news. The Rudd Government is sticking to the commitment it made at the July, 2008 COAG to refer questions of the purpose and effectiveness of Australia's anti-dumping legislation to the Productivity Commission for review. Just the right policy-signal to be sending ahead of the G20 meeting.
"The Commission has been asked to assess the policy rationale for, and objectives of, Australia's…
Sheridan scandalized
Thu, Mar 19 2009Cyclopean conservative critic on rivals…
"[I]t is a tragedy the way Lowy generally has developed. It is is a weak think tank that gets very little bang for its buck. It seems to have two primary roles. One is to provide a convenient luncheon location for DFAT's visitors to Sydney. The other is to act as a remarkably sterile echo chamber for whatever are the pieties of the day of the liberal…
Australia not at ‘most risk’ of warming
Wed, Mar 18 2009
The Financial Times carries a story on the politics of the Australian emissions trading scheme legislation that makes the usual genuflections to alarmism but manages also to be dead wrong in the second paragraph. It quotes John Connor, head of the Climate Institute, which describes itself as "an independent research group in Sydney" (merely fashionable thinkers however):
"‘We are the developed…
Bailouts & crime as redistribution
Wed, Mar 18 2009"To get some perspective on what's going on, I looked up the total direct losses from property crimes in the US. This totalled $17.6 billion in 2006. Meanwhile, the cost to US taxpayers, for one firm alone (AIG) are around $170 billion (and quite possibly going to increase further). That's almost 10 times more than all property crimes." Extract from The Compulsive Theorist
Ruddmobile
Tue, Mar 17 2009"Committing $100,000 of taxpayer money to saving each job in the car industry was already a prodigious waste of money but this will look cheap compared with the cost of nationalising Holden. In time, Australians will come to rue the day Rudd decided to treat the car industry as an issue of systemic significance." Oliver Hartwich in The Australian
Rodrik’s Plan B for global finance
Tue, Mar 17 2009
"[T]he logic of global financial regulation is flawed. The world economy will be far more stable and prosperous with a thin veneer of international co-operation superimposed on strong national regulations than with attempts to construct a bold global regulatory and supervisory framework. The risk we run is that pursuing an ambitious goal will detract us from something that is more desirable and…