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Keywords: Gfc

  • ECONOMICS

    Which party really has the economic smarts?

    • David James
    • 13 August 2013
    3 Comments

    As the China boom fades Australia is experiencing a delayed version of the GFC, without the banking crisis. Until now we've been reasonably well served by both sides of politics, in terms of macro-economic strategy. Now we require a way of dealing with more mundane economic issues like productivity and efficiency. Neither side has many good ideas about how to achieve the required structural shifts.

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  • ECONOMICS

    How financial devils came to rule the universe

    • David James
    • 05 June 2013
    7 Comments

    Religious authorities may not spend a lot of time pondering the nature of global financial systems, but the Pope's recent comment that 'money has to serve, not rule' suggests it can be useful when they do. Given scope to become rule makers, rather than just people who know how to exploit the rules, financiers have moved themselves to a position of mastery.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Best of 2012: The upside down world of global capital

    • David James
    • 09 January 2013
    1 Comment

    Money is not like water, that 'flows' around the world, reaching 'equilibrium', or experiencing 'volatility'. It is transactions between people, based on trust. It enables the cooperation that forms the basis of social life. Human beings should be at the centre. Yet that is the opposite of what is happening. Monday 27 August 

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  • ECONOMICS

    Ways out of economic depression

    • Bruce Duncan
    • 18 October 2012
    8 Comments

    Tony Abbott warned that Australia could go the way of Greece with excessive debt. Such claims reflect a climate of exaggerated concern about debt. Instead Australia could be taking advantage of historically low interest rates and embarking on major infrastructure projects, increasing employment and laying the basis for sustained growth in productivity.

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  • ECONOMICS

    The upside down world of global capital

    • David James
    • 27 August 2012
    5 Comments

    Money is not like water, that 'flows' around the world, reaching 'equilibrium', or experiencing 'volatility'. It is transactions between people, based on trust. It enables the cooperation that forms the basis of social life. Human beings should be at the centre. Yet that is the opposite of what is happening.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Drowning rats of Wall Street

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 02 August 2012

    Eric Packer is 'the one per cent', who stoically discusses economics with his chief advisor even as an anti-capitalist protest broils outside his limousine; Occupy reimagined as animal anarchy, with protestors yielding spray-paint and dead rats; 'the 99 per cent' of the besieged city raging to reassert their worth.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Investment bankers and other monsters

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 22 March 2012
    1 Comment

    The action takes place in 2008 on the eve of the GFC, at an investment bank loosely modelled on Lehman Bros. The CEO is monstrous; a kind of sinewy bishop to capitalism, gaunt and vicious. Yet even the most principled characters are shown to compromise to varying degrees in the name of self-interest.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Thatcher's blame game

    • Michael Mullins
    • 16 January 2012
    9 Comments

    It is arguable that, because she was one of the architects of the free market financial system that lacked protection for ordinary citizens, Margaret Thatcher shares responsibility for the widespread public harm caused by the GFC and the eurozone crisis.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Elders' wisdom could save us

    • Michael Mullins
    • 08 August 2011
    10 Comments

    We could be facing a new GFC because many decisions on the financial markets are made by financial traders in their 20s who are uninterested in learning from past experiences. Youth may be the future, but there will be no future without the wisdom of our elders.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    O'Farrell makes a sham of government guarantees

    • Michael Mullins
    • 30 May 2011
    13 Comments

    Earlier this month, NSW premier Barry O'Farrell announced he would dishonour the guarantee made to those who signed up to the previous Labor Government's Solar Bonus Scheme. Undermining the 'sacred' bond of a guarantee can seriously damage the spirit of public trust.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The opportunity cost of Rudd-love

    • Michael Mullins
    • 14 December 2009
    5 Comments

    If Hawke and Keating had failed to act on economic reform, the opportunity cost would have been devastating unemployment during the GFC. It is not difficult to imagine the opportunity cost of the priority Rudd is giving to his own popularity over reforms that are now urgently needed.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The heroes and villains of Michael Moore's world

    • TIm Kroenert
    • 12 November 2009
    9 Comments

    Michael Moore makes documentaries only in the sense that Today Tonight does investigative journalism. That's not to say he doesn't land a few well-deserving kicks while he's at it.

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