The Dutch disease, Produces dependency, Dependency has produced complacency, Complacency produces despair. Pulling back the sheets There’s the moment, many of us are only too familiar with, when we realise the three-and-a-half-star hotel that we decided to settle for wasn’t celestial enough. The sheets had known whiter days, the mattress sags in the middle,…
In 2017, Janet Yellen, the then Chair of the Federal Reserve Bank of America, which is arguably the most prominent and influential financial position to be held by anyone throughout history, boldly stated that “another financial crisis not likely in our lifetime”. In every sense, Yellen must be considered the highest source of authority for a statement…
We’ve all experienced that moment when a business meeting, a dental appointment or a shopping trip took slightly longer than expected only to escape a while later to find a small white piece of paper sitting under the windscreen wipers of our car demanding that we fork out over $100+ to a local government with…
Not to blow my own trumpet… too much … in April last year, I was writing about how Australia was heading to a mortgage crisis. The issues that I saw unfolding were that politicians on both sides of the political fence had misplaced priorities regarding housing prices. Primarily, their focus was on getting more and more…
“The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little…
‘The chance of gain is by every man more or less overvalued, and the chance of loss is by most men undervalued.’ – Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations. 2017 marked the year that Bitcoin, a virtual “cryptocurrency”, exploded in value with recent prices as high as $18,000 AUD creating a whole new generation of millionaire…
“The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.” – John Kenneth Galbraith Abstract: The numbers are astronomical. The worldwide debt is beyond comprehension. The great ‘recovery’ post-2008 never happened. The only thing looking good at the moment is the stock market as company buybacks are at record highs due to low-interest rates…
“It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.” Thomas Jefferson Democracy is projected by many as the pinup boy of a truly liberated society. While the notion of the people ruling themselves often results in…
Economic books are written throughout the times of prosperity and generally re-written after a crisis. Venezuela is no exception. For a while Politicians, Actors and Nobel prize-winning Economists alike praised Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez for his socialist policies, his attention to the poor, his dedication to health care and education. But not anymore. No one is praising…
“Truth, of course, must of necessity be stranger than fiction, for we have made fiction to suit ourselves.” Gilbert K. Chesterton As a child I would spend large amounts of time playing with mirrors. I know, I know. It’s a strange choice of entertainment but the game that my cousins and I invented became a classic…