It’s always rotten – and people need to be brought to account.

Chinese caught in a bear trap?

Marcus Padley’s typically matter-of-fact irony about the sharemarket “Don’t let a little bubble spoil some irrational exuberance” in THE AGE yesterday has much to recommend it. He’s spot-on.

You can still do very well in shares whilst making the Chicken Littles looking for the sky to fall (a reversion to the mean) appear extremely stupid.

When the market does eventually correct, the easy response is “Well, even a broken clock is right twice every day!”

So, what someone who studies the fundamentals is up against, whether in the stockmarket or in real estate, is that it’s clearly not over until it’s over.

Seems the fundamentals don’t matter when the bubble money is still running ….. only when the fat lady sings.

As Padley says: “The only people that get caught in a correction are those who think investment is always long term.  It’s not.  It’s about letting your profits run and cutting your losses.”

Nevertheless, it has always seemed more than a pity to me that destruction is repetitively visited upon people and their economies once the music does stop, and that it was indeed our elected governments playing the bubble music, per medium of bubble-inducing tax regimes – as sometimes augmented by quantative easings.

What have we learned? Absolutely nothing?

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/07/six-years-global-financial-crisis-learned.html

George Williams’ piece in THE AGE today:  Time to fix a silence at the heart of Australia’s constitution

And my comment:

“Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.”

– Irving Fisher, 21 October 1929

<– “A rise in land prices cannot simply flatten out at a high plateau because the increment has become part of the expected return that buyers are paying for, and lenders are relying on. So prices that cannot rise further have to drop: there is no equilibrium level at the inflated level of the boom ….”

“Cleaning up the mess from the last few manic years will cost sweat and tears and some fortunes, whoever undertakes it. Lower rents and land prices will finally let us recover, but the process of getting from here to there entails a fall from illusion to reality, from high to low, that will agonize many ….”

“New administrations will prolong the agony by trying to defer it. They will bail out a few of the victims and many of the culprits by raising national debt and inflating the currency to validate bad debts and sustain land values.”

– Mason Gaffney, “After the Crash: Designing a Depression-Free Economy”

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Many thanks, Ed Dodson, at the School of Cooperative Individualism

Prosper Australia logicians Gavin Putland and David Collyer have each turned out thoughtful pieces this morning.

Putland: How entrenched is negative gearing? on the Land Values Research Group website.

Collyer: The sovereign state of Pigovia on Prosper Australia’s site.

Go, guys!

Phew! It seems that David Murray’s interim report of the government’s Financial System Inquiry poses no real threat to the Future of Financial Advice (FoFA) having backslid on the previous government’s requirement that financial advisors must act in the best interests of their clients–despite Minister Mattias Cormann’s protestations to the contrary and Clive Palmer’s backflip. –> http://www.theage.com.au/money/planning/big-puzzle-of-palmers-backflip-20140716-ztoab.html

FoFA released financial advisors from a lot of unnecessary red tape and nonsense, didn’t it? (“No, your honour, the fine print mentioned that I’d be getting commissions for myself and doing the odd bit of churning with my client’s funds. He was clearly warned of the risks.”)

All these financial sector inquiries make a weird sort of sense when the only remnants of what used to be the Australian economy are represented by vast sums of money looking for a home, whether in superannuation or elsewhere. How can any recommendations be in the best interests of a client in Australia’s present economic circumstances?

No longer a service sector, the Australian FIRE sector* and rent-seeking continues to run rampant.

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* Finance, Insurance and Real Estate

Listening to today’s debate on repeal of the carbon tax, I was astonished to hear the government tell the opposition that the carbon tax adds to production costs.

Yes, yes!  A very good point, Prime Minister!  Indeed, ALL taxes add to costs. I hope the Opposition was listening to this salient point.

Whilst it could be argued that–like taxes on cigarettes–taxes on pollution should provide a salutary warning to polluters, the point remains:  ALL taxes DO add to costs, and get passed on in prices …. right throughout the economy.

But revenues drawn from rents on natural resources and government-granted privileges DO NOT add to costs, Prime Minister (and Leader of the Opposition). They REDUCE them! Do you understand this critical difference, gentlemen?

If NOT, you’ll continue to scratch your heads about the faltering Australian economy.

If you DO, there may be hope for Australia and Australians yet!

So, onward, Tony Abbott …. now for the abolition of the GST and income tax – surely more damaging to Australian society than the tax upon carbon pollution?