Wry & Dry: a cynical and irreverent review of the week in politics, economics and life. For intelligent Readers who disdain the trivial.
But first, a snapshot of this week’s Investment Matters:
It’s about research updates on two investments:
- HMC Capital
- Imdex
To read Investment Matters, just click on the link at the bottom of this week’s Wry & Dry. Or here.
1. Teals’ Sextet silence
There would be hue and cry1 if treasurer Grim Jim Chalmers requested a discounted home loan rate from the CBA. The cry would be loudest from parliament’s Teals’ Sextet.2
Y’see, in the 2022 election campaign, the Teal Sextet campaigned strongly on integrity in politics. They championed the establishment of a National Anti-Corruption Commission, with “real teeth” (as distinct from one with false teeth, perhaps).
Wry & Dry is curious as to why there is no hue and cry from the Teal Sextet about Albo and his Australia’s favourite airline. Albo turning left extended beyond politics, it seems, to turning left when entering a Qantas flight. Because when Albo was transport minister, some 22 times a person in his office asked the very interesting Qantas CEO, Alan Joyce, for free upgrades for his family for overseas vacations.
Wry & Dry sees no difference between the hypothetical discounted home loan and the actual free first-class overseas upgraded tickets.
Of course, in politics the receipt of perquisites is an unstated but well-known benefit. State governments are littered with examples of freebies, in cash, in kind (if you follow…) or in favours.
But asking for expensive freebies is not in the code of decency. Especially when the asker is the transport minister, the freebie is expensive international travel, and the provider is an international airline. Was there a quid pro quo?
Albo has not only put his snout in the trough of privilege, he has also earned the unhappy sobriquet: “Upgrade Albo.”
And Albo, get a grip. Australians can’t have any more stuff-ups; it’s getting tiresome having Uncle Fester Dutton frothing up in confected outrage on television. Especially when he also has had his snout in the flute of champagne on a mining company’s private jet.
As for the Teal Sextet, Wry & Dry wonders will they ever rise from their self-righteous slumbers and criticise the government?
1 Hue and cry is an archaic term meaning a loud outcry used in the pursuit of one who is suspected of a crime.
2 The Teals are a group of six loosely aligned, ‘progressive’ federal politicians. Ironically, each won their seat from centrist Liberal party politicians, in wealthy electorates. They have been accused of being ideologically driven and ignoring more difficult issues such as rising government debt, tax-reform, relationship with China and the Middle East.
2. Blame Sleepy Joe
The Trumpster will win. Solely because of Sleepy Joe’s cussed stubbornness in wanting to hang on for another four-year term. This meant that his eventual capitulation came too late for Democrat primaries and the convention to select a decent candidate.
His increasing interpositions for Kamala Kamala have become ravings of an old, old man.
Gretchen Whitmer, Amy Klobuchar, and Pete Buttigieg are three vastly better coodabeens than Kamala Kamala, and should have had the opportunity this year. Readers will hear those names in four years’ time.
Y’see, Kamala Kamala got the gig because of want of time, not because of her ability. She is a product of the Californian Democrat Party machine. Which means she will capitulate easily to her party’s flapping left wing, especially when it comes to identity politics, economic policy or polarising cultural issues.
She has not shown any intestinal fortitude or deep thinking about issues – the vacuity she shows on stage reflects the way history shows how she is really. Her choice of a running mate, because they ‘get along well together’, is a case in point. She chose him as a buddy, not as a competent contributor.
The biggest worry for Wry & Dry is what will she do when she gets the 3am phone call that Emperor Eleven has invaded Taiwan? Prior to becoming Veep she hadn’t been to Europe, much less China. Google Maps, perhaps? Doubtless, the Ruddster will be on hand.
3. What of the Trumpster?
The Trumpster is a certifiable and narcissistic sociopath. His life and career are a series of independent transactions, be they with businesses he ran or with women he, err, courted. He cannot see, for example, a link between standing up to Tsar Vlad in Ukraine and thereby deterring Emperor Eleven from invading Taiwan.
Alarmingly, his economic policies, or, more correctly, populist thought bubbles, will be ruinous. Consider tariffs (60% on everything from China, and 20% elsewhere). He sees these as the solution to an array of problems: making the country rich, funding tax cuts, reversing decades of globalisation, and forcing factories to move back to the United States.
The Trumpster forgets history. Or perhaps didn’t learn any. The tariff increases of the 1920s and 1930s partly caused and exacerbated the Great Recession.3
Then there is foreign affairs. The Trumpster would cut off aid to Ukraine and hand Tsar Vlad the victory he has so far been denied. Tsar Vlad’s dream is the EU’s nightmare. If Ukraine is vanquished, the eastern flank of the EU and NATO would be exposed to potential Russian creeping aggression.
Trump’s stress on power politics and his indifference to democracy and human rights worries the EU. But it makes him the preferred partner for Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel, Mohammed bin Salman’s Saudi Arabia, Narendra Modi’s India and… Tsar Vlad’s Empire.
But he might stand up to Iran. It will depend on that critical judgement factor: his mood.
3 In 1922 Congress had enacted the Fordney-McCumber Act, which raised the average import tax to some 40%. Then, in response to the 1929 stock market crash, the sweeping Smoot-Hawley tariffs raised import duties even further. Within two years some two dozen countries adopted similar “beggar-thy-neighbour” duties, making worse an already beleaguered world economy and reducing global trade by over 60%. Hence the Great Recession.
In 1934 President Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed back against the tariff idiocy. And signed the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, reducing tariff levels and promoting trade liberalisation and cooperation with foreign governments.
4. Nett nett
It’s an awful choice they-the-American voters have to make.
For Wry & Dry, the crucial difference between the Trumpster and Kamala Kamala is not ideological but temperamental. A Kamala Kamala administration would be stable and predictable, if pathetic and weak. A sort-of latter-day Jimmy Carter.
The Trumpster would bring wildness, impulsiveness and volatility back to the Oval Office, something the world does not need.
Kamala Kamala would get Wry & Dry’s vote. But it won’t help. The Trumpster will win, 297 Electoral College votes to 241.
5. Pandemic response review: missed the point
The various Australian governments’ absurd response to the covid pandemic was famously exemplified by the South Australian Chief Health Officer. Just prior to a game at the Adelaide Oval, she pleaded with football spectators “to duck and do not touch the football” lest they contract covid from it.
And this week, the federal government’s limited review of the responses of all governments to covid was released. It was all rather predictable: many good things occurred, but there were unnecessarily long lockdowns; unnecessary school closures; unnecessary expenditure; unnecessary interest rate reductions, etc.
All Captain Obvious stuff, really.
What was missing was deeper insight into the mental health issues now emerging, and the massive increase in youth crime from the student cohort most vulnerable from time away from schooling. These outcomes were not dwelt upon.
And, at its core, the review failed to recognise, as Professor Gigi Foster4 noted, that the pandemic was dangerous mostly because of the governments’ reaction to covid, not because of covid itself.
Readers, especially those from Victoria, will well remember various governments’ heavy-handed and coercive interference in people’s lives and their medical choices, often driven by a state premier seeking to imprint on we-the-people a sense of him/her being a saviour.
As for the facts, they speak for themselves.
4 Professor at the School of Economics at University of NSW.
6. Meanwhile, in the Cane Toad State
Readers south of the Tweed5 were probably not aware that last Saturday the Labor government in the Cane Toad State was given the DCM by voters, in a 7% swing.
The result was no surprise, in view of the monumental incompetence and spend-thriftiness of the now lost-in-the-wilderness government. It was a surprise, however, that the Greens primary vote was unmoved at 9.25%. It had planned to increase both its vote and representation, from two seats to six.
In a crush to those fragile Green egos, it lost one and is at risk in the other.
Analysis by former Labor Senator John Black showed that the Greens picked up votes from low-income men in semi-skilled blue-collar jobs and also Arabic speaking migrants. But lost votes from every other demographic (e.g. graduate and post graduate professionals or managers working in media, finance, education, health, etc). Its increasingly deranged positions on the Middle East and union corruption ensured a zero-sum outcome.
Federally, what does it mean? The Greens currently hold three Queensland seats: it might lose the lot, one to Upgrade Albo and two to Uncle Fester Dutton. But a week is a long time in politics.
5 A stream that separates Queensland from the civilised world.
7. UK: even bigger government is back
There’s a 120-day-old government in the UK, with the most unpopular PM of the modern era (ignoring the lamentable Liz Truss) – see the chart, later.
And the PM’s not going to become any less unpopular after his Chancellor of the Exchequer (a fancy name of the Treasurer) brought down the new government’s first budget on Wednesday.
Good grief, Rachel Reeves didn’t take half measures. In a vision to fix the UK’s broken public services she boosted the UK’s tax burden to be 38% of GDP. And the tax increases were accompanied by the biggest surge in borrowing outside a crisis for more than 30 years.
The parliament’s own Office for Budget Responsibility stated that interest rates would rise by 0.25% points and inflation by 0.4% points. It said it was “one of the largest fiscal loosenings of any fiscal event in recent decades.”
And there is no pathway to growth. In fact, GDP growth was expected to decline from the current 2% to a mere 1.6% within 4 years.
Even bigger government is back. The only good thing is that the UK doesn’t have enough sunshine for the government to plausibly become a world leader in solar panel manufacturing.
8. Return to work… or don’t return to work
The world over, employers have told employees to reduce or eliminate WFH arrangements.
In the US, 34% of companies now require all workers to be in the office five days per week, up from 31% in June.
Many require a three-days-a-week office, including the usually large tech companies such as Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft. But many employees see the three-days in the office rule as nothing more than, well, a guideline.
But not that purveyor of vile coffee: Starbucks. It has told its employees to return to work, or don’t return to work.
9. Coal deaths decline
The respected Lancet medical journal reported this week that the number of people killed by air pollution from fossil fuels fell by almost 7%, from 2.25 million to 2.09 million.
The decline is caused by the closure of coal-fired power stations.
10. Outlier
Victoria Health revoked its covid vaccination mandate requirement for health workers in early October. The last state so to do.
The exception was for firefighters. Up to 39 operational firefighters are still prohibited from working because they are unvaccinated.
The Victorian government ended its pandemic declaration two years ago.
11. Disapproval
Feather to a duster. Chocolate to a boiled lolly. Etcetera.
So, the new PM of the UK, Sir Keir Starmer, now has the lowest approval rating after winning an election of any UK PM in the modern era: -38.6.
The chart is for the first 110 days. Liz Truss is an outlier on the chart, as she didn’t get past 49 days.
6 Upgrade Albo’s is -14.
Snippets from all over
1. A Tsar Vlad court enters the record books
A Russian court has fined Google two undecillion roubles – a two followed by 36 zeroes – for restricting Russian state media channels on YouTube. In dollar terms that means the tech giant has been told to pay $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. (BBC)
Wry & Dry comments: Tsar Vlad needs the dosh.
2. The rain in Spain… was deadly
Flash floods that ravaged southern and eastern Spain have underscored the lethal threat from rising temperatures that are turning the Mediterranean Sea into a “petrol can”, experts say. (Financial Times)
Wry & Dry comments: Torrential rain centred on the Valencia region killed at least 158 people this week in one of the worst natural disasters in Spain’s modern history.
3. Europe’s largest vehicle company to shrink
Volkswagen will close three car factories in Germany and cut tens of thousands of jobs in its homeland, according to an employee representative. (The Economist)
Wry & Dry comments: It’s all about Chinese cars.
4. The Trumpster’s company
Donald Trump and his allies were scrambling on Monday to stem the fallout from a campaign rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden where one speaker called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” and another likened Kamala Harris to a prostitute with “pimp handlers”. (Financial Times)
Wry & Dry comments: Always wise to judge a person by the company they keep.
5. Emperor Eleven doesn’t like Halloween
Shanghai authorities have cracked down on Halloween costumes, amid fears of a repeat of last year’s mass gathering that included people wearing outfits with political messages. (Financial Times)
Wry & Dry comments: Ah, the ever-present fear of public unrest.
It figures
- 2.8%: Australia – inflation for the year to end September, down from 3.8%. RBA will be unmoved.
- 1.4: UK – fertility rate, the lowest since records began in 1938. Australia’s is 1.5.
- 1.3: Germany – fertility rate, ditto.
- 2.8%: USA – GDP growth in 12 months to end September.
And to soothe your troubled mind…
“Wherever there’s injustice, oppression and suffering, America will show up six months late and bomb the country next to where it’s happening.”
PJ O’Rourke, American humourist .
Wry & Dry comments: The quote is from Wry & Dry’s files, there being nothing notable said this week.
Disclaimer
The comments in Wry & Dry do not necessarily reflect those of First Samuel, its Directors or Associates.
Cheers!
Anthony