Economics and Finance
With surpluses like these who needs deficits?
Some people have criticised the Howard and Costello years for their ‘reckless spending’. In fact the current treasurer may have used just those words. I would argue that whilst in the second half of their term spending may have been excessive, i.e. overly generous or even un-necessary it was not reckless. Excessive spending is spending spare cash inefficiently. Reckless spending rather, is spending money you don’t have on things you can’t afford. And for examples of reckless spending we need look no further than this year’s budget revisions, as former treasurer Peter Costello in the Sydney Morning Herald. Wayne Swan originally announced...
Read MoreBusiness on the Frontline
Do soldiers need an MBA to transition to the business world? Do Businessmen need a dose of ‘army training’ to become better leaders. This great article from the Economist thinks so. THE path from the military to business school is well yomped. A life in the armed forces teaches many lessons, but marketing, finance and entrepreneurship are rarely among them. So veterans looking for a move into the commercial world often need a crash course in the basics. But when they get there, they often find that there is also a lot that civvies can learn from them. Not surprisingly, most students from an armed forces background find the first weeks at business school a...
Read MoreHousing shortage, what housing shortage?
Another year another report on housing shortages (heck another day another report). This week the Housing Shortage National Housing Supply Council released their State of Supply Report. And, unlike many other ‘reports’ this one is made by some pretty smart (and objective observers). Not to suggest that the many press releases and associated findings from various industry bodies aren’t correct – but there is a degree of scepticism when reading a report claiming the need to build more houses from an organisation whose job it is to represent the cause of building more hou Amongst the report’s key findings are: Despite weaker market...
Read MoreInformation Overload – too much information is making us less productive (and a lot less happy)
THE culture of modern business needs to change with workers drowning under a deluge of emails and information, experts have warned. Corporations are failing to help staff cope with the technological barrage, daily meetings and constant connection, leading to rising levels of stress and psychological illness, not to mention and costing billions in lost productivity. Psychologists and experts say the information glut is becoming a major issue for firms who are searching for realistic answers to the problem. A recent report, commissioned by Hitachi Data Systems, found 40 per cent of companies in Australia and New Zealand are suffering from the information glut, up from...
Read MoreEuroMoney, please define “Best Performance”?
Thank you John Gault, You sum it up perfectly!
Read MoreHow to turn a recession into a Great Depression
This is a really great article about how the US government, through poorly planned interventions and protectionism turned the Great Recession of 1929 into a decade long depression, while large parts of the world were already recovering. America’s Great Depression is often cited as the primary example of the failure of free market economics. According to the official liberal interpretation of the Depression, both the economic collapse that began in 1929 and the nation’s eventual recovery prove that the American government must never again allow its economy to operate in a free market mode. The common view is that the 1920s in America was a period of unbridled free...
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