I loved this letter to the editor in today’s Australian Financial Review (I would link to the AFR website but the content is only available to subscribers).
The letter was submitted by David Beattie of Mont Albert, Victoria:
A great little club
As a small investor, I’d like to wish all the Australian finance insiders – the fund managers, executives, merchant bankers and lawyers – a great year. Although I could never aspire to your earnings, it’s great that my investment funds let me assist your wealth by voting for ever rising executive pay and allowing more and more bonuses and payments to high-priced bankers and lawyers. That fact that you guys are all friends – and therefore know how to reward each other with my money – makes it even better.
Surely, the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the subsequent credit exposure for the banks is a result of the cosy relationships that exist in the finance sector – a small community of wealthy people lining their pockets at the expense of the common man.
Unlike Enron, this fraudulent activity is endemic to an entire industry, which makes it hard to point the finger and provides Government with no option but to bail the banks out with our money!
Just heard that the Australian stock exchange lost $30bn today amid fears about a US recession.
So Bush wants to bring peace and stability to the Middle East – what a laugh!? What do lame duck leaders and retired politicians do, they go to the Middle East in search of peace? Blair and now Bush being the most recent examples. Has Bush just learnt about the Palestinian problem? Things may have been very different had he started here rather than in Afghanistan, post September 11. The hypocrisy and front that our leaders so often display staggers me. Staggers me. Yet it continues apace and right under our noses, one can only hope that the ‘mood for change’ that seems to be sweeping the developed world – Rudd, Sarkozy, Obama (maybe) – will lead to actual change and a more long sighted, fair and humanitarian view of the world.
Google has introduced a standard for the development of social networking applications, its called OpenSocial. Standards had names like SOAP, BPEL, WSDL and UDDI up to now. The challenge with Web services is not developing the technology but in agreeing on the business semantics.
Did the term ‘Item Shipped’ mean the same thing to every company?
Google’s strategy with OpenSocial is to take the emphasis away from Facebook (which people are getting bored of, by the way) in the same way that Web services where about taking the emphasis away from Microsoft.
The ’semantics’ have converged with naming conventions in the case of OpenSocial. But surely, the effect of OpenSocial – if successful - will be to muddy the waters when it comes to social networking.
Then again, perhaps OpenSocial will allow small communities to exist in their personalised community while mixing with the rest of the world if they want. Make your own mind up, this article from Computerworld is a starting point.
It gives rise to the question is social media a solution in search of a problem? It will only sustain us when we are all sat behind computers all day or they are wired into our brains.
I am not a religious person but it’s good to see religious leaders use their position to raise important issues that affect us all. The Archbishop of Canterbury came out and said what most people already think about the Americans and their imperialist agenda. He has also provided his view on what the Americans (and the West, in general) need to do to regain the moral high ground and I agree with him.
It amazes me that in these apparently transparent times with almost immediate access to information and breaking news our leaders can carelessly throw their weight around while wrapping the whole exercise up as some sort of freedom march.
With Blair, Howard out and Bush on his way out, perhaps we can look forward to a period of pragmatism over dogmatism… I’m convinced that it doesn’t have to be this difficult.
There has been a change of Government in Australia today. The polls were right, the Labour Party had it in the bag. John Howard has resigned. Long live Kevin Rudd.
Australia has enjoyed an economic boom during Howard’s ten years in power. Personal wealth in Australia has grown higher relative to most of the rest of the countries in the world.
This boom has been largely driven demand from China and other countries for Australia’s raw materials, of which there are plenty.
Labour is entering power at a very uncertain time. The sub-prime crisis combined with disruption in the Middle East, changing global hierachies and the threat of environmental crisis makes for a pretty shitty few couple of years.
I wonder if the Liberals are happy that Labour will take the flak for what is about to happen, leading to their return in just three years time. It will provide more content for negative campaigns in the future.
The Australian manufacturing sector has deteriorated into nothing and the remaining industry – agriculture – is threatened by climate change, the country is in drought and is now subject to the rise and fall of two masters, the US and China.
Its election day and people have made their choice but…
How much influence and control does this country have over its own destiny? So many of the real influencers are macro external and the global nature of things means that Australia has no option but to play ball.
There is no place in the industrial complex for the sort of protectionist tendencies that were once associated with the Labour Party.
Only a few days until Australians go to the polls. The Liberal Party got busted in the New South Wales seat of Lindsay for distributing materials purporting to come from an Islamic group, which supported the Labour Party. Pretty shocking tactics…
All we’ve heard about during the run up to the election is the two party perferred vote polling. I can’t help but wonder if the Greens have the potential to skew the results somewhat given the fact that environmental concerns are high on most people’s agenda and as there is little to separate the parties from a policy perspective.
I just watched a Liberal party broadcast fronted by John Howard. He basically said that everything is a mess but we shouldn’t change the government because the future is uncertain. I’d argue that its due to the certainty of John Howard and people like him that we are in this mess. Watch it and make your own mind up?
I couldn’t find the Uncertain Times Commercial on YouTube but I did find this:
All the talk of interest rates during the Australian Federal election is getting boring. Its almost irrelevant anyway (in my view). Broadly speaking, interest rates are beyond the control of Governments. Yes, the ability of a Government to manage the economy determines interest rates but macro economic factors are more significant influencers.
It will be a travesty if the Liberal Party stays in Government – they are fighting a negative campaign and seem to have very little to show for more than ten years of Government, apart from a strong economy. They can’t legitimately claim responsibility for this either.
The election should be fought over fundamentals; issues that Governments actually have a direct influence such as education, sustainability, civil rights, industry, innovation and public services.
I agree with Colin Byrne that Gordon Brown’s idea of a snap election in November was a bad idea. It’s like a CEO nominating himself for employee of the month during his first week in the job! Not cool.
I am living overseas, but I like Gordon Brown. I just wished he’d recognised that he needs to prove himself before he can expect the backing of the general populace, regardless of the gap between his party and the Cons. That’s not rocket science.
I wanted to write a post about an item on tonight’s edition of MediaWatch (an ABC program here in Oz), I intended to link to the MediaWatch page but the relevant content isn’t up yet. The main story on MediaWatch tonight was about the commercial stations reporting on African gangs in Melbourne. These prime time news programs claimed that gangs of Africans were roaming the streets, causing trouble, raiding bottle shops and scaring the bejesus out of everyone. The news items co-incided with a decision by the Government to prevent African refugees entering Australia until the middle of next year. The MediaWatch team found that the stories were completely fabricated, the ‘witnesses’ were misquoted and mis-represented. On closer inspection, it was easy to see that the video evidence that was used to support the story – on various channels – didn’t even feature Africans! How can this happen? Worse still, what percentage of commercial news viewers watch MediaWatch? Not many; they are still under the impression that Africans gangs are running Melbourne suburbs. As the original eye witness said ‘this is a gang issue’ not a ‘race issue’. This fair minded commentary was obviously ommitted from the news coverage because it didn’t fit with the broader political agenda. How are we supposed to have faith in global news agencies and news producers when this type of manipulation is occurring at the local level?
I believe that the above is partly a reflection of commercial broadcast media in Australia, which is at worst racist and bigoted and at best peurile and pointless. Take Alan Jones, who fails to disclose his personal interests (which are in the millions of dollars) while positioning himself as the ‘voice of the people’. Link to this MediaWatch story for more on this. In the end, all Australians suffer…while those in power manipulate and spin to suit their own self serving agenda.
