Paxter

Oh dear. Can’t help thinking that the Broad no ball and Carey drop will be crucial. 

Still a decent morning for England. Getting Smith like that was a bonus.

Usman looking good - always pleased to see him do well and prove the doubters wrong.

I'd be shocked if England can penetrate much on Day 2. Warner could perhaps even score runs on this strip.

But again. My predictive power RE: test cricket is virtually nil or negative. 

I wouldn’t have declared but what do I know.

Pretty good fightback there from Joe and Johnny.

Wonder what is a good score on this pitch?

Yup. Australia’s session I’m afraid.

1 hour ago, Raja said:

paxter what have you done

Haha.

Pretty good stuff from Crawley so far, knocking the ball around. Pitch looks flat. Pope did his usual get in, get out trick. 

Kiss of death: I think Aus have a good chance to win an away Ashes series (would be their second this century). 

In favour of Aus:

• Dominant middle order (Marnus/Smith/Head)
• Experienced, balanced, relentless pace attack
• Good team balance with the rise of Green
• Stokes unable to bowl (or unlikely to)

Against Aus:

• History
• Conditions
• Jimmy Anderson
• David Warner
• Bazball (though this could backfire in this instance - who knows)

Praying to the cricket gods that Moeen comes up trumps in this series. 

The Senate cross-benches keep growing, this time as Dutton expels SA Senator David Van from the Liberal party. Seems like there are at least two further allegations against him so far, in addition to those made under privilege by Thorpe. 

22 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Colonists afraid the natives will do to them what the colonists did to the natives, if they give them a toe in the door of influence.

Or just racism?

It can't be a coincidence that the states less in favour are those with a greater tradition of intolerance. 

According to a recent Resolve poll:

Quote

Support for the Indigenous Voice has fallen below a majority on the Yes or No question that will decide the referendum, dropping from 53 to 49 per cent ahead of a crucial Senate decision on the wording of the change to the constitution.

Voters have swung against the proposal for the third month in a row and are backing the No case in three states – Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia – when asked the federal government’s proposed question.

So yeah. Things not looking good from my perspective. 

And the above was confirmed by the sentiment on my extended family WhatsApp group...

A better performance from India in the second half of the test, but still a comfortable win for Aus.

You'd think with a lead of 300 and India missing the brilliance of Pant - this match is pretty much over.

Australia definitely making a case that they could snag a rare away Ashes win. They seem to have most of their bases covered - defensive batting (Smith, Marnus), in-form aggressive batting (Head), all-rounder (Green) and a varied attack. 

I really hope Moeen's return to tests is a good one. 

Warner gone early. I wonder whether he has done enough to get an Ashes berth...

7 hours ago, ljkeane said:

Yesterday’s man, you can’t be going at a strike rate of 45 in the Bazball era. 

On the other hand Scott Boland currently going at zero runs for one wicket in England is a little concerning. 

ETA: India are in big trouble here. They’re staring down the barrel of an embarrassing defeat if they don’t put a solid partnership together soon.

“Doesn’t matter how you get them, just matters how many”.

I’d take Smith over any Bazball initiates :P.

Signs as well that Smith is returning to the peak of his powers, which must be triggering for England. He's managed to keep his test average over 60 despite a slight dip in form since the pandemic.

Kohli meanwhile has seen his average dip below 50 (currently at 48.9) and has a poor test record since COVID. 

Pretty poor day for India after a decent start. Hopefully they can bounce back and make a good match of it still. 

But first...the WTC Final. 

Looking forward to this one.

20 hours ago, Jeor said:

RBA lifts rates again and signals more to come. With inflation still at 6.8% it's bound to keep going.

I have thought for a long time that the RBA was living in a dream and needed to follow the rest of the central banking world higher. Last year, we were talking about them getting to 2-3% and then pausing - that was certainly way off. 

The reality is and remains that rates of 3-4% are still accommodative when headline inflation is running at 7% and core inflation (trimmed mean) at 6% (i.e., still translates to a negative real interest rate). This creates an incentive to borrow, not to save. But perhaps we will finally start seeing a slowdown effect this year.  

Not quite true - Tasmania is still governed by the Libs.

And now McGowan has surprisingly resigned in WA.

Regionals rallying hard today. Plenty of industry insiders are blaming the volatility on short-sellers’ vulture like behaviour (especially shorting ETFs). I am less scathing of the shorting - at the end of the day it’s fair game to make a bet on the future viability of banks with questionable business models.

Ultimately we are likely to see significant consolidation as more of these regionals reach attractive valuations. In the meantime, margins and profits are going to be squeezed for the foreseeable future. 

At least no resolutions this weekend!

7 hours ago, Jeor said:

I'm glad we don't have the patchwork of banks that the US does, and most importantly, that all banks in Australia have to abide by the same regulation (rather than the two-tier system). When your whole business is in confidence and trust, you want there to be a pretty high bar for entry into the market.

Yeah the prudential framework is generally pretty good. It’s not quite a level playing field as the large banks are permitted to implement their own capital rules via internal models, while the smaller banks have to use a completely standardized approach (much to their dismay). That tiered system has slowly been watered down over the years as APRA has followed new Basel rules that effectively restrict the use of models.

The major banks also get a two-notch upgrade on their credit ratings because Moody’s and S+P both believe they are implicitly guaranteed by the government. This gives them an edge in funding markets. 

But overall it’s a quite conservatively and I think fairly regulated system. There’s a bias towards the safety of the big players, but that’s arguably a feature more than a bug.

ETA: On deposit rates, I think it was the speed of increases (or lack thereof) rather than the level of rates that was the concern. But it’s good that TINA is now over, at least for a while. I hate the idea of negative interest rates and wish we had never taken that path globally.

4 minutes ago, karaddin said:

It's the first time in my life that inflation has been high enough to be noticeable and it's gone substantially past that point. If I'm even noticing it then there must be a lot of people getting absolutely hammered by it, and a lot of those are going to be the ones stuck in rental so even if the rate rises don't hit them they're already under significant financial stress.

I thought I was going somewhere with this at the start of the post but I forget where haha.

I guess I'm hoping that if the RBA manages to get inflation back under control, that will end up being a boon for most renters and probably worth the interest rate hikes. 

And let's not forget what got ourselves into this inflation mess:

• Global lockdowns that froze supply chains and caused shortages of goods
• Massive and overly prolonged fiscal and monetary stimulus both at home and abroad
• A sharp rebound in demand for services like travel, dining out etc. 
• Labour shortages in key services industries (the biggest chunk of the Australian economy)
• War in Europe causing a global commodity-price shock

The RBA is trying to fix this mess with the only tool in their toolkit: interest rates. And as others in this thread have pointed out (Anti-Targ chief amongst them), it's actually a pretty shitty tool. 

36 minutes ago, Jeor said:

In some ways it is actually a confirmation that the Big Four government policy is working. With four major players there is enough competition to keep prices rational. This doesn't help the non-bank lenders or regionals, but it's at least proof that the dominant market position of the Big Four isn't a cartel.

The current inquiry into deposit rates might indicate otherwise! And we are going to lose Suncorp at some stage, which is kind of a shame. With the demise of Bankwest and St George years ago, there really isn’t much choice at the regional level. 

Having said that, it would be unusual for a country of our size to have many more banks than we do. And it’s not as if the US is a great exemplar right now with its ultra-diffuse market for financial services.

Oh they are loving the profit boost. Bank stocks are paying good dividends again. It’s just not as big as analysts were expecting, because the expectation was that they could throw their oligopoly power around. Instead they are competing hard to get deposits and loans. 

Insurance was never a money spinner for them but the loss of wealth management does narrow their business models.