In 1975, a national delegate attending an international conference on the global economy joked: “Who do you expect will be at this conference in 100 years? France or General Motors?” Little could he imagine…
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Queensland towns and suburbs have been hit by floods again. Flooding is not a rare event here and most residents are not surprised by the recurrence of floods. But the memory of the 2011 floods is still…
A new report from the OECD on Australia’s employment service system has prompted the Federal Government to claim that Australia is a “world leader in employment participation” and that Job Services Australia…
Australian economists and financial-market regulators would agree with much of Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz’s recent speech to the Reserve Bank of India. The complexities of formulating useful models…
Along with stagnating economic growth, Tasmania is facing a major demographic challenge - rising unemployment and a population which is both the oldest in the country and ageing faster than any other state…
The economic profession lacks a unified theory of economic growth. Textbooks and academic journals contain a plethora of models and paradigms which generate different (and sometimes contradictory) predictions…
The stockmarket was hoping for great things from Apple’s earnings announcement for the December quarter. Most of all, they were hoping for something that would turn around a four month slide in Apple’s…
The coordinated policies of the Bank of Japan and the Japanese government in increasing money supply has had some interesting short-term implications for the Australian dollar. Since the Bank of Japan…
Two recent events have highlighted the potential pitfalls of miners doing business in developing states. The first was the departure of Tom Albanese as Rio Tinto’s Chief Executive following a $13.3 billion…
Last week the German government’s economic forecasts for 2013 have made clear that the Euro crisis will have a serious economic impact on Germany, with the economic growth projection cut down to a mere…
Late last year, the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) held what might be its most a productive meeting for some time. In Geneva, delegates from about 160 countries moved one step closer to…
Two recent cases highlight the problem of misleading advertising. In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has dismissed an appeal by POM Wonderful about health claims for their juice…
Hurricane Sandy may or may not be a direct result of climate change, but what is certain is that the incidence of extreme climate events is increasing. Such events are predicted by climate models, according…
For some, the recent collapse of UK music and DVD retailer HMV is another sign of a music industry undergoing an increasingly rapid and radical transformation to digital. Although this is partly true…
In a fragile world and with a particularly fragile share market, Australia’s corporate regulators have seen their role in policing the area of continuous disclosure multiply. Disclosure requirements are…
This week, US civil aviation safety regulator, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) took the massive step of grounding all US Boeing 787 Dreamliners. Its equivalent European counterpart, the European…
Will anti-coal activist Jonathan Moylan receive justice if he is charged over his hoax? ASIC, which will formally interview Moylan next week, is under enormous pressure to “make an example” of the 24-year…
The current review over the regulation of trustee companies has revealed significant problems with how trustee companies are paid for managing charitable trusts. Submissions to the review claim that the…
The battleground between business, taxpayers and government for 2013 is taking shape. It is manufacturing and jobs. On Wednesday, building materials company Boral announced at least 700 job cuts in Australia…
It is universally agreed Newstart is inadequate, especially for the long-term support of individuals or families. The government says their solution is for recipients to get a job, but that is not easy…
Forecasting commodity prices is like buying a second hand car. Only the car’s previous owner and perhaps the dealer really know what the car is actually like. In contrast you, the buyer, are an outsider…
The last-minute fiscal cliff deal was narrow in scope; President Barack Obama and the Democrats got less tax revenue and far less stimulus spending than they were hoping for, but there weren’t any cuts…
As populations in OECD countries continue rapidly to age, the increasing imbalance between those young enough to work and those old enough to receive the pension is sounding alarm bells. By 2050, the “old…
When the embers have cooled or the floods have passed, who’s looking after the sustainability of small business in regional Australia? This year’s extreme heat and dry weather have again ensured Australia’s…
At the end of a 19 month investigation into Google’s search business by the US Federal Trade Commission, many commentators declared that Google had “dodged a bullet”. In other words, the journalists believed…