Thursday, 30 January 2025

Around the Traps 31/12/25

 It is time again for Around the Traps.

Aussie,Aussie,Aussie,Oy,Oy,Oy

OZ Climate

Northern America

Europe

Asia

Wonk

General

Climate

Andrew Gelman (mainly stats)

Dianne Coyle ( quirky + book reviews)

Vox Wonk

Posted by at No comments:

Wednesday, 29 January 2025

The RBA has no excuse for not cutting rates

 The quarterly CPI was released yesterday and it came out lower than expected again.

See HERE and HERE.

Annual inflation is 2.4%. The trimmed mean is 3.2% and in six month annualised terms it is 2.7%.

The trend is down and stil lgoing down. All the business surveys confirm this.

For too long the RBA have been concerned about a tight labour market. Wages are not a  problem.

They need to cut rates now.

This also confirms Bulloch was the wrong choice. If Lowe had to be replaced then his deputy made no sense and unfortunately experience tells us the RBA is making the same mistakes they did when Lowe was in charge!  THE RBA needed a modern Bernie Fraser.

Posted by at No comments:

Tuesday, 28 January 2025

Band of Brothers

 My eldest son told me ha had one month of binge and he wanted to watch Band of Brothers.

I told him I watched it when it first came out and it is fantastic. Watching it a second time I can confirm this.

Do yourself a favour and watch it. you can go straight to episode 2 if you have limited time

Posted by at No comments:

Monday, 27 January 2025

electricity bills

 We have a household of 4 yet we used to be told our usage was that of one that had 2 and half people and we still got bills of over $400! This means any other household would be getting quarterly bills of around $800- 1k. Why did they stop putting out the information? Perhaps because the bills did not correlate with the usage?

We recently put on more solar panels.This meant that with the government rebate and our solar feed we got a quarterly bill of $75. Despite not getting much for our solar feed we do export quite a lot at present despite people working from home three days a week.  The payback period now appears to be much shorter then we calculated! My guess is we will put in a battery when they stop all solar feeding.

I'm told taking a shower at night uses more electricity than anything else so the payback period might be shorter as well depending on quickly we adopt renewables.

Posted by at No comments:

Sunday, 26 January 2025

A few things

 Australia Day

I get sick of this. Australia became a nation on January 1 1901. Why are we possibly the only country in the word that celebrates its national day on the wrong day?  It is like celebrating your birthday on a day on which you were not born.  Only in Australia.

Trump

I am shocked , totally shocked that a convicted criminal would break the law and stop any impartial investigation of government.

UK

The media get something wrong about economic policy.  I missed this and it appears it did not matter!

Posted by at No comments:

Thursday, 23 January 2025

Around the Traps 24/1/25

 It is time for Around the Traps again.

Aussie,Aussie,Aussie,Oy,Oy,Oy

OZ Climate

Northern America

Europe

Asia

Wonk

General

Climate

Andrew Gelman (mainly stats)

Diane Coyle  ( quirky + book reviews)

Vox Wonk

Posted by at No comments:

Wednesday, 22 January 2025

what is it about solar?

Just read THIS.

Do people realise the Federal government (m or State governments) do not diresc public companies where they invest? Certainly the companies need to meet laws to invest but they are NEVER told where to told where to invest.

Let us give an example. The government can say hey you can invest in an offshore wind farm in this area BUT they are not forced to invest there. They will only invest in they get the appropriate return

I should not have to say this. This is what happens in a  market system.

DUH!

Posted by at No comments:

Tuesday, 21 January 2025

daytime wholesale prices are heading south bigtime

 Read this. daytime-wholesale-power-prices-are-heading-to-zero-isnt-that-good-news.

Interesting eh!
Read THIS as well

Posted by at No comments:

Sunday, 19 January 2025

Double Jay rock

 2JJ started 50 years ago and it was fantastic.

(Before this the only decent music was on 2BL on Monday night with Chris Winter's room to move essential listening. The program before him by Rod someone was pretty good as well )

The same song was not played on the same day. They mostly played album tracks that the commercial stations avoided. I remember it was the first time I heard East West by the Butterfield Blues band.

The morning program was as funny as anything and on sunday we got nude radio by essentially the Aunty Jack team. I think they were eventually replaced by Roy Slaven and HG Nelson with This Sporting Life.  It was humour at is very best!

Doublejay rock was great for a while but then ran out of steam. I was no  longer listening when it converted to FM and became 2JJJ.

But in its heyday it was wonderful to listen to. Cannot say that about any radio station today!

Posted by at No comments:

Thursday, 16 January 2025

Around the Traps 17/1/25

 It is time again for Around the Traps.

Aussie,Aussie,Aussie,Oy,Oy,Oy

OZ Climate

Northern America

Europe

Asia

Wonk

General

Climate

Andrew Gelman ( mainly stats)

Dianne Coyle ( quirky + book reviews)

Vox Wonk

Posted by at No comments:

Wednesday, 15 January 2025

We shall see if the ALP are hopeless or not

 At present the LNP are leading in the polls slightly but they are leading.

Although there is a lot of talk about inflation I have yet to hear from the ALP that inflation was rising when the last government was in power. Indeed interest rates were raised in the last campaign! Although it would be unfair to say inflation was their fault, that's politics. No journalist has queried the LNP about this.

Then there is the budget. the LNP made NO effort to repair the budget. Although the ALP made some minor improvement in the structural budget deficit they di not increase it. A strong economy allowed for a significant improvement in the budget balance. As I have repeatedly said it is very hard to repair the budget when the RBA is raising rates. It would be hard to avoid a recession by repairing too hard.

Quite clearly the LNP if they are to be believed would have put Australia into a severe recession. Of course one could be sceptical given their record in government.

As you can see there is  plenty of ammunition to hit the LNP  yet it is not happening. I might add the media again does not ask obvious questions to the LNP on fiscal policy.


Let us go to Immigration. Dutton has said he would massively cut immigration BUT would increase skilled labour to build homes. It means a huge cut to international students for example and essentially no more family reunions. When asked about this Dutton has said He favours better treatment for pensioners so they can increase the labour force. Huh A 68 year old tradies does not want to continue to work!

Plenty of ammunition to attack for the ALP but I have yet to hear them.

Finally there is the LNP's nuclear nonsense. Perhaps the ALP  is waiting for the election campaign but they should not. Apart from the nonsensical 'research' which should get a large workout in an a campaign. We have really yet to hear the ALP really hit the LNP with the huge costs involved, the large price increases which would occur by relying on gas and coal before nukes come on board. Will the LNP demand retail companies buy nuke power or will they subsidise it so it is then competitive with renewables.

Given the large number of people who have solar panels they have yet to say this MUST be curtailed if you have base load power.

As you can see there is plenty just on these few topics to attack the LNP but little coming from the ALP ( or from journalists)

Posted by at No comments:

Tuesday, 14 January 2025

Shock horror. Nuclear like coal is NOT always on

 This is well worth a read. Nuclear is not more reliable then wind nor solar.

Posted by at No comments:

Monday, 13 January 2025

how do you combat anti-semitism?

 I have heard a lot of people say governments should do more to combat anti-semitism.

Just this morning I heard a young lady ( they are all young now!) say this very thing. Then purely as an afterthought she said well very few people have been arrested.

Perzactly. Until some-one is arrested and then prosecuted and then sentenced we do not know if we do need greater penalties. If no-one is arrested then sentences become academic! Remember too anyone arrested will get the full media treatment. That will be probably a greater deterrent than any sentence.

There is simply far too much posturing on this very important topic.

Posted by at No comments:

Sunday, 12 January 2025

A few articles on the LA fires

 These fires are terrible.

Here is Noah Smith's opinion. Tyler Cowen thinks it is pretty good!

Next we have some from Kevin Drum.

HERE and HERE ( this is more general and long but very good.)

Posted by at No comments:

Thursday, 9 January 2025

Around the Traps 10/1/25

 It is time again for Around the Traps.

Aussie,Aussie,Aussie,Oy,Oy,Oy

OZ Climate

Northern America

Europe

Asia

Wonk

General

Climate

Andrew Gelman ( mainly stats)

Dianne Coyle ( quirky + book reviews)

Vox Wonk


Posted by at No comments:

Wednesday, 8 January 2025

Aileen Cannon is a disgrace

 Aileen Cannon is a judge in florida appointed by Trump AFTER he had lost in 2020.

Read Mark Stern and weep.

Posted by at No comments:

Tuesday, 7 January 2025

Politics overseas

 Well a lot is going on.

Canada

Trudeau has announced he will resign. I am not surprised. This is the Liberal's third term and that is one term too many. There will be an election in Canada by October and the Conservatives will win.Inflation had killed most incumbent governments and it will do so again here.

Germany

The coalition has broken up and an early election in winter will be held. This is a shame as it was a coalition led by the SPD first term. A party of right wing ratbags appears to be gaining strength.Immigration is their key.  Whether a new coalition will govern after the new election is problematic.

France

Macron seems to be still in trouble in forming a government. His disastrous decision to call early elections is coming back to haunt him.


The world seems to be in a funk

Posted by at No comments:

Monday, 6 January 2025

David Leith unleashes

 David Leitch had had a gutful. He doesn't think much of the LNP's nuclear policy nor of frontier Economics 'research that it depends on.

I won't lie it is a long read but well worth it.

Posted by at No comments:

Sunday, 5 January 2025

The Australian/ India series

 I have to say I am not surprised Australia won 3-1.

The main reason I thought australia would easily win is that the much vaunted Indian batting lineup is over-rated.

Sharma and Kholi are in decline and should not have been in the team. Pant bats far too up in the order to be effective. The only spinner they brought who can take wickets here , Ashwin, retired in Brisbane. They appeared to have no plan on who formed the bowling and simply relied on Bumrah taking wickets. No other bowler was consistent.

Having said that They should have won in Melbourne when poor fielding and batting from Kholi and Pant meant they lost instead of drawing it.

I am staggered that after the poms showed how you bat to Boland they completely ignored this and allowed boland to put pressure on the batsmen not vvica versa.

In Sydney they merely needed to pitch the ball a good length and let the pitch do the rest but their bowlers did not understand this. 

Very poor coaching!

For Australia this win hid problems. It is an aging team. Batting collapses are not rare. Our bowlers are old and rarely get past 140 k. In the Ashes Starc will be 26, Hazelwood 34 and Cummins 33.

Just as India have batsmen in decline so do we. IF the poms bring out FIT fast bowlers we will be in trouble. We have only one player below 30 and no players is in their 20s. This is very poor long term.

We were very lucky Bumrah was injured for most of the sydney test. It was the most wicket friendly wicket for bowlers. If fit he would have easily taken ten wickets and possibly won the test for the Indians

However overall it proved yet again the best test cricket is when bowlers dominate batsmen.

Okay some technical points.

Batsmen should  play for the swing early on when facing Starc and then only play short balls outside the offstump and then play glances or shots of the hip after that.

Why si oes Sundar bowl around the wicket in Australia. It doesn't spin very much which negates the tactic and if you are short  or not on target there are east runs.

I am staggered why so many bowlers bowl around the wicket to lefthanders. IF you do not swing the ball away or cut it away then the tactic is stupid.

Why do bowlers bowl short to tail enders? Bowling a full length got them wickets previously and the drive is the hardest shot to plat technically.

Finally when will the McGrath foundation be asked why they have vey high administrative costs. No-one asks and no-one answers this very obvious question

Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)