THE banks will behave badly again. The only questions are how long it will take and what form will it take. In the 2011 film “Margin Call” an investment bank CEO played by Jeremy Irons rattles off the years of financial busts from the late 17th century to the 2008 crisis that he is dealing with in the film. Continue reading “Malfeasance evolves with booms and busts”
Malfeasance evolves with booms and busts
THE banks will behave badly again. The only questions are how long it will take and what form will it take. In the 2011 film “Margin Call” an investment bank CEO played by Jeremy Irons rattles off the years of financial busts from the late 17th century to the 2008 crisis that he is dealing with in the film.
THE Treasury-Home Affairs report on immigration seems to have based its evidence and reasoning upon its conclusion that high immigration is a “good thing”. On the report’s own figures, present high immigration will produce an extra 1.1 per cent of total GDP. Given that 190,000 immigrants year is just a tad under 1 per cent, that does not make for very much increase in GDP per person. And that is on Treasury’s optimistic and economics-only view. 
THE future is in plain sight. I saw it over the past two weekends at either end of the country: in a house in Middleton south of Hobart and on Low Island, north-east of Cairns. Both off-grid. But the Monash Forum breaks numerous Liberal Party principles to support coal 
THE Treasurer and others might well look to behavioural psychology and behavioural economics when framing the Budget, but we would be better off if they ignored them. It took several decades for mainstream economists to accept that the economists’ view of the world was essentially flawed.