Sunday, May 29, 2011

A Special Report

It might be that many of us are not concerned with the long term - thinking that we need to deal only with the here and now. The today as opposed to the tomorrow.

I suppose when the value of your house is continually going up - regardless of what you do - then thinking about today as opposed to tomorrow is quite natural. The day after tomorrow will be better and we will think about that then.

But when your house price trajectory is in the other direction then you will be very concerned about tomorrow as opposed to today. Because tomorrow will mean that your wealth is somewhat less than it was yesterday.

And that is the thing that we seem not to fully appreciate. House prices go down - as well as up. And when they do start to go down then they usually keep doing that for quite some time.

Instead of thinking that our government will bail us out again and again - we probably should be starting to take a bit of personal responsibility.

And one of the things that will help with that is to become a little better informed.

I know that is a foreign concept for many but let’s forget our press and television - and let’s start to seek out the sources of knowledge and information that will help us to deal with uncertain times.

Lots of them exist - and anyone who has been reading my posts will know where to go to find them.

A special report on Australia by The Economist - audio here - is surprisingly good. As is Bill Mitchell. Now I know that Bill can be a little verbose - but this is well worth reading.

The piece I loved and can't resist quoting is this assessment of Julie Bishop by the conservative columnist Greg Sheridan.

"The opposition’s response, through Bishop, was pathetic. It was internally contradictory, unprincipled, amoral beyond even the exigencies of parliamentary hypocrisy and profoundly stupid. Bishop was a dud shadow treasurer and is now a dud foreign affairs spokeswoman. But her response on China betokens a much broader crisis for the opposition. The Liberal Party is now not so much a political movement as a collection of unemployed former ministers in search of a public service to do their thinking for them.

Bishop’s press release of August 19, surely one of the dumbest press releases issued by a foreign affairs spokesperson"


One of the ways that we can become a little better informed is to mark down the nonsense thinking of "The Coalition" until their leadership start to tell the truth and articulate real policy that is aligned with the interests of all Australian's.

Because if you continue to ignore them they will keep doing this sort of sh*t to attract your attention.

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