I’m just back from a week’s holiday up in far north Queensland, so I’ve got a few books to review. First cab off the rank is HIH: the Inside Story of Australia’s Biggest Corporate Collapse. by Mark Westfield, who is the journalist who kept the pressure on HIH for mostContinue Reading
With politicians everywhere blaming hedge funds and short sellers for the financial crisis, I guess it was only a matter of time before short selling was completely banned. Over the past week, gradual steps have been taken to make it harder. First naked short selling (selling a stock without evenContinue Reading
AIG, the world’s biggest insurer, has been rescued by the Federal Reserve. They’ve lent them $85bn, and in return they get to own 80% of the company. Given that the market capitalisation of AIG was $10bn (on Tuesday’s close, according to the NY Times), I’m guessing that the $8bn or soContinue Reading
It’s polling day here in NSW today – the whole state votes together for our local councils. Back in 2000, the NSW government changed the electoral rules for local councils in a way which significant improved the chances of political parties ahead of genuine independents. What they did is outlinedContinue Reading
Randy Pausch, whose Last Lecture was an enormous hit on Youtube, died yesterday. He was a computer science professor, who after being told at the age of 48 that his pancreatic cancer was terminal, gave a lecture entitled “Really Achieving your childhood dreams”. His university (Carnegie Mellon) had a seriesContinue Reading
The campaign for paid maternity leave in Australia has gotten renewed vigour following the recent change of government. The government has asked the Productivity Commission to enquire into what should be done. And there are a lot of blog posts about it. Joshua Gans has written a series from anContinue Reading
Today the teachers went out on strike in NSW – over recruitment policies for schools. The SMH had two conflicting letters next to each other from teachers: The Government’s tinkering with a fair, time-tested and successful transfer points system is just the latest unintelligent act that will make recruiting qualityContinue Reading
Mr Penguin alerted me to this interested article in Wired. As you would expect, in the US, Republicans are more likely to be sceptical about global warming than Democrats. Environmentalism has always been found more on the left than the right, and Republicans have more to lose from action thatContinue Reading
As part of the carefully scheduled program of budget leaks, the government has leaked a likely change in the medicare levy in this weeks’ budget. A few blogs have comments – Larvatus Prodeo, wonders whether this will increase the pressure on the public system with a long comment thread, coveringContinue Reading
Well actually, my title is ironic. A teacher of a Year 1 class in Sydney has been sacked by the education department for posing nude with her husband and talking about their sex life in the sealed section of Cleo. You can read more here. This isn’t of course, politicalContinue Reading