Paxter

Got to love Dutton. He never changes: He later says: Isn't "love of country and pride in history" what to think? Not how to think?

100% correct. It’s up to the accused. Choosing judge alone isn’t that unusual though. Happens very frequently in domestic violence cases (jurors are often not fond of the accused in those situations).

I’d expect more of the same from this highly uninspiring Albanese government. ETA: Unfortunate ending to the Higgins trial. Misconduct by juror.

Another hot inflation print for the Reserve (we even beat NZ this time!): This quarter, food and housing were the main drivers, as well as household goods like furniture and consumer non-durables. Petrol prices actually fell this quarter (though I doubt that will persist after the recent OPEC decision). With core inflation running so hot and interest rates still at historical lows (though admittedly a lot of tightening has been done), the real interest rate is still negative. Hopefully it has risen enough to slow the economy down without breaking anything, but only time will tell. I think we're probably looking at another two 0.25% rate increases before this year is out.

Haha. To be fair he didn’t completely endorse the bigotry. But it would have been nice to see him stand alongside the majority, who probably have zero issues with the whole thing (gay representation included).

Right up there with aged care is child welfare services including adoption services.

The CEO though has more or less agreed with the letters, apologized and ordered a full review of the musical. Fringe meets power.

Let’s not forget that Catholic schools don’t have to meet the legal standard. They are afforded an exemption (the one they would have used to dismiss my sister from her employment). Non faith-based organizations would be committing an offence if they did the same.

Haha how about not being homophobic? It would be a start. ETA: Also more than happy to concede that faith-based organizations have been a force for good on many occasions. But why shouldn't we hold them to a high standard of behaviour? Including on discrimination?

My (lesbian) sister’s threatened dismissal from a Catholic school would say otherwise. I also faced many issues as a gay student in a Catholic school. Fine with your point on “capture”. Let’s just call it “influence”. Is that OK?

Let's hope they continue to cede ground. Until they have no pernicious influence left. Oh and I won't be amending my explanations (what a surprise!) "Ceding ground" = ceding an influence that should never have been permitted in the first place. ETA: And I have no doubt that most parents of kids in Catholic schools are not practising Catholics. Which underscores my point (raised many times in previous threads) that we should phase out all of their discrimination exemptions. Their client base doesn't even want them to be so fanatical! ETA2: As for your point that this was a "small vocal minority", well the CEO seems to agree with them: Personally I think it's great that they put this musical on and no way should a review of that decision be required. As long as parents were aware of the PG rating - there should be no issue.

Have to laugh at the furore regarding Sydney Catholic Schools' production of School of Rock. The musical featured, among other atrocities, a same-sex couple (gasp!) We are honestly fucked up as a country for allowing organized religion to capture such a large segment of education services. I am embarrassed when I have to explain this sad state of affairs to inquisitive foreigners.

You’re doing the right thing. 5% down isn’t too bad (hopefully some dividends are playing an offsetting role) considering the broader market has fallen by much more. But I certainly feel your pain. Clearly you didn’t buy many or any overvalued tech stocks, which is a massive improvement over many other investors!! This week is going to be interesting. Emergency bond buying is over in the UK, being replaced only by a (repo) liquidity facility that banks (not pension funds) can access. If the banks don’t want to use these facilities (they aren’t free), we will likely see bond buying return.

I think long-term investors in diversified portfolios are still in pretty good shape, unless they only just got into investing during the pandemic. The main victims so far are people who put all their Covid savings into Bitcoin or Peleton.

You're not wrong. Yields on gilts actually went up again today quite sharply after the Truss announcement, which is not what Bailey was looking for! We will have to see whether bond-buying starts again on Monday.

Separately, there might be a few whiskeys being downed on Threadneedle St tonight. Bailey can probably relax as Truss prepares a complete fiscal u-turn. That should take the pressure off gilts and the pension funds.

I think this rip is just due to some pricing support around 3,500 on the S&P. The inflation number was a confirmation of the status quo so not able to move the market meaningfully. The "Dimon Drop" will require more information on the breadth and length of the expected downturn and its effects on earnings and/or financial markets. We probably won't have that knowledge this year. ETA: Forgot to add that lots of traders are expecting the market to bounce when the GOP win the House in Nov and Congress is gridlocked for two years. Markets love that. So this is a nice buying opportunity if you are expecting that Fall bounce.

Hard to really argue with Dimon on the further 20% from here. Inflation in the US is running incredibly hot, with Core CPI (a stickier view of inflation) now rising to 6.6% (new print out today - highest number we have seen so far this year). That implies a negative real interest rate, even after the 300bps of tightening we have seen so far this year. Many think we need to see positive real interest rates before demand will really start to taper off and take the heat off prices. Others think that we have done enough tightening and should pause for about 6 months to view the lagged effects of rate hikes. I think most central bankers are in the former camp.

Pretty funny (and very typical of modern finance) that basically the most boring type of financial vehicle (the pension fund) has become an over-leveraged source of systemic risk.

Having said the above...financial stability will be getting a test in the coming days. Bailey has said the BoE will end its emergency gilt buying in three days (unsure why that deadline was given - hopefully he knows that the pension funds have raised enough cash now to meet their margin calls). Either that or Bailey is playing chicken with Truss. I think the overall indirect contagion risk here is fairly low internationally...unless of course other countries have also turned their pension funds into mini-banks that are leveraged and vulnerable to market/interest rate risk. As for direct contagion risk, that depends on whether any global financial institutions have material exposures to the players (both banks and non-banks) in the UK charade.

The similarities are certainly there with the GOP...gimme a tax cut baby! On the bright side, at least this whole conversation is a (possible) genuine point of contention between the two major parties. There is precious little dividing them at the moment, other than culture wars stuff like ScoMo's religious discrimination bill. When I think about it, Albo effectively conceded all major policy points in order to gain power.

@Jeor: Why is it better to give the $120k plus crowd a tax cut than spend that money on the aged care or health system? Or tax credits for struggling families? $243bn is a nice pot of money…can’t we find better uses for it? We have talked a lot in this thread about ways to raise taxes either for budget responsibility or to fund services to an ageing population. This move completely goes against that mantra. It’s more a Reagan style trickle down thing :(. Hopefully voters see right through the broken promise to the wise policy decision. I didn’t vote for Albo so that we could keep this! On fiscal restraint of emerging economies, I can see both sides. We have to avoid Argentina style situations but at the moment the pendulum probably has swung too far towards austerity. Pakistan, for example, should probably be spending more, not less, in the wake of its devastating floods.

For sure, institutions like the IMF encourage countries to reduce corruption and maintain high-quality spending. But they are also strong proponents of a balanced budget and they usually make smaller deficits a condition of financial assistance.

If that were true, emerging economies could rack up huge deficits in health, education, social security and infrastructure while never receiving a credit downgrade.

The eternal struggle between adequate social investment and prudent economic management! If you have a strong tax base, both goals are within reach. The ScoMo tax cuts don’t help on either score.