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 early, but there are some obvious Trump investment outcomes.
To read Investment Matters, just click on the link at the bottom of this week’s Wry & Dry. Or here.
1. Post-election musings
A message to the handwringers: the Trumpster is president. Deal with it.
Sleepy Joe should immediately resign, giving the presidency to Kamala Kamala. This would ensure his place in history for giving her a place in history as the first black female president. Without her having enough time to do anything silly before 20 January. And also ensure that her incessant bleating about losing will cease.
The Trumpster is not interested in the 68 million Americans who didn’t vote for him. Actually, he’s not interested in the 73 million that did vote for him. He is only interested in one American. And seeing his likeness carved into Mt Rushmore.1
Kamala Kamala got buried under a massive landslide. Also buried is a potpourri of Democrat whimsies, such a wokeism, celebrity, identity politics and big government. These will be interred forever in the tomb of really, really, bad ideas.
Of all the people who surround the Trumpster, only JD Vance and Elon Musk know how to control him. The former will make being a ‘tradwife’2 mandatory. The latter will ensure the survival of America’s EV industry. And that of its biggest maker of EVs.
Kamala Kamala still has not taken responsibility for her loss. Despite not ‘flipping’ even one of the 3,143 counties in the US. And about 90% of those swung to the right. Responsibility for her loss has instead been taken by Joe the Cameraman.3
Sleepy Joe is still asleep. And still has no idea that it’s all his fault.
On Wednesday night, Kamala Kamala phoned Tsar Vlad to concede defeat.
On Wednesday night, the Trumpster phoned Emperor Eleven and offered to sell Taiwan to China.
In a life previous to being Australia’s Ambassador to the US, the Ruddster wrote some especially nasty things about the Trumpster, which he deleted only last week. The Trumpster is a good hater. It’s now time for the Ruddster to develop a mysterious illness.
By the way, Wry & Dry predicted the Trumpster by 297-241. He will win 312-226.
1 A colossal sculpture carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore, South Dakota. The sculpture, finished in 1941, features the 18m tall heads of four US presidents: Washington, Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Lincoln. The sculpture is on land that was illegally taken from the Sioux Nation in the 1870s. The Sioux want their land back. If the Trumpster’s image is added, the Sioux won’t want the land back.
2 A tradwife (a neologism for traditional wife) is a woman who believes in and practices traditional gender roles and sees a wife as a mother and homemaker.
3 ‘Joe the Cameraman’ took responsibility for stating that an Australian test cricket bowler “can’t bowl, can’t throw.” The comments were said by Shane Warne and picked up by a microphone placed at the foot of the stumps.
2. Panic envelope
Panic Envelopes are an indispensable resource for governments. These devices are happy policy announcements that are planned, but not announced until the government or its leader is sinking in the quicksand of incompetence.
Which brings Wry & Dry to Upgrade Albo. Last weekend, after a fortnight from hell, he opened the topmost Panic Envelope in the Panic Drawer of his desk. There it was: a policy to reduce the debt of those paying off student loans, the so-called HECS or HELP debt.
Cost: some $16 billion of we-the-taxpayers funds. This is shocking policy, for a quintet of reasons.
Firstly, those with outstanding HELP debt have far higher lifetime incomes than those without them. This is middle-class welfare: a transfer of money from those without university degrees to some of those with them.
Secondly, logically, if the government helps these people because of ‘cost-of-living pressures’ then, surely, as cost of living pressures ease, the government should reverse the debt relief. But it won’t. The error is locked-in.
Thirdly, students should learn Life 101: You borrow. You pay it back. They entered into the HELP debt arrangement with their eyes wide open. Rather like borrowing from a bank, but a lot more generously.
Fourthly, the Chief Teller of the RBA has been screaming at the government not to push more cash into the economy, or take less. Lest interest rates don’t come down.
Finally, we-the-taxpayers are paying for this.
4 Readers will know that this is an ‘off-budget’ measure, sort-of-similar to NBN. Which is another way of saying it’s all smoke and mirrors. HELP debt is an asset of the government, in the same way that mortgage loans are an asset of a bank. By writing off $16 billion of assets, the government’s net debt is increased by $16 billion. This will mean additional interest payments on government debt of almost a billion dollars each year.
3. UK Opposition Leader is black and female. Who cares?
There was much fuss in the US when Barack O’Bama was elected as the first black president. And much fuss when Hillary Clinton tried to become the first female president. And even more fuss when Kamala Kamala became the first black woman to become vice-president and then run for the top gig.
Why all the hang-ups about identity? Really. But the facts now speak: American female voters care less about gender than they did about policy.
The UK was the first Western country to elect a female prime minister/head of government: Margaret Thatcher in 1979.5 There was only a little fuss about her being, well, female: members in the gentlemen’s clubs in St James choking on their Pimms when they heard the news.6
And there was very little fuss when Rishi Sunak became the UK’s first black prime minister.
Last weekend’s selection of Kemi Badenoch as the UK first black female Leader of the Opposition didn’t raise any identity political conversations. The only matter raised was that her Conservative Party holds an unexciting 18% of the seats in the House of Commons. The 51% benchmark seems a long way off.
It will be a long five years, where her main challenge will be not those opposite (i.e. Labour Party) but those seated behind her (her Conservative Party, err, colleagues). No mistake, the silver knives will soon be out if she cannot best the robotic Sir Kier Starmer.
5 Although there was notable female leaders elected in non-Westen countries, Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka) in 1960; Indira Gandhi (India – 1966); Golda Meir (Israel – 1969). Eva Peron (Argentina 1974) was not elected, but succeeded her husband in the role.
6 In fact, 79 countries have now elected a female prime minister/head of government. There is one significant outlier… USA.
4. “We have full confidence in….”
A great deal of offal is often dropped from a great height on certain unions, especially the CFMEU.7 And rightly so.
But those CFMEU troglodytes would themselves be pointing fingers at Australia’s corporate world.
Former Qantas CEO Alan Joyce was a recent long line of company executives with the snout well into the trough. Older Readers will remember some of the old-timers: John Elliot, Alan Bond, Christopher Skase, etc. And that is not to ignore those whose theft still remains undiscovered.
So, this week, another one bit the dust: Mineral Resources founder Chris Ellison. His board of directors gave him the prestigious same-day DCM, on Monday. It’s all about his somewhat dubious tax schemes and him working with other senior executives to charge up to 70% above market for industrial properties that they leased to the company. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.
The shareholders have been robbed. The writing was on the wall some time ago, but the company’s board didn’t notice. Then, two weeks ago, it issued an ASX statement, stating that it had “full confidence” in Ellison.
Readers who follow AFL will know that when a club’s board says “it has full confidence in the coach” then the coach’s bags have already been packed for him/her.
The board will sting Ellison for $8.8m plus a loss of $9.6m in remuneration. But he’s a billionaire, so, well, he doesn’t care.
Ellison is the epitome of corporate greed. But, unlike Richard White, last month’s Dumb and Dumber corporate CEO, Ellison crimes were fiscal, not sexual.
ASIC, the corporate labrador, is investigating.
7 A very large and recalcitrant trade union.
5. Don’t mention the war
Germany’s grand coalition of everyone but the little-bit-right (black, in the chart) and far-right (blue-grey) has collapsed. Germany’s Chancellor (i.e. prime minister), the affable but wooden Olaf-of-bread Scholz, has given his finance minister (i.e. treasurer), the iconoclastic Christian Lindner, the DCMontag.
Olaf-of-bread now leads a minority government.
Y’see, Olaf-of-bread is from the centre-left Social Democrats (red). Lindner is from the neoliberal Free Democrats (orange). The third leg of the coalition stool is the Greens (green), a more sensible green party than its Australian counterpart, but green nonetheless.
Hence the moniker ‘traffic light coalition’.
Lindner had been pushing for corporate tax relief, a freeze on all new business regulations and a delay to net zero targets as part of a comprehensive package to get the economy moving after years of stagnation.
The Greens rejected the delay to net zero targets. The Social Democrats want to keep shoring up the welfare state. Lindner rejected both. And so, he got the DCM.
Elections will probably be held in January.
All this as Europe’s largest economy has to come to terms with the Trumpster in the White House.
6. Plain speaking from the RBA
Chief Teller of the RBA has told the federal and the state governments to stop stoking inflation with excess spending. “It’s not just the federal government – it’s the state governments as well,” she bluntly said.
Leaving interest rates unchanged for the moment, she warned of another interest rate increase.
She also has just been scratched from Upgrade Albo’s Holiday Greetings/Christmas card list.
7. Just as Upgrade Albo was on the ropes…
… Uncle Fester Dutton’s coalition has begun to show signs of idiocy. From the usual suspects, the Gnats.
Firstly, on Wednesday, National’s Senator Bridget McKenzie fessed up to failing to declare 16 flight upgrades. A confession made all embarrassing because she is also shadow transport minister. And had made much noise about Upgrade Albo’s upgrades.
Political judgement is not in the Senator’s lexicon. Readers will remember her role in the Sports Rorts Affair, when as Sports Minister she managed a sensational $100m pork-barrelling scheme, whereby a high percentage of the dosh went to sporting clubs in marginal coalition electorates.8
Secondly, on Monday, Uncle Fester ordered Coalition MPs to abandon their push for a federal abortion debate. This follows the Queensland coalition’s governing majority being slashed by a similar conservative pre-election push in the Queensland election. Labor thought it would retain just 15 seats. It held 35.
On Wednesday, Nationals Senator Matt Canavan announced that he will not change his plans to introduce a bill to reduce abortion access. It’s complicated, not least of which abortion is a state matter and the Senator’s plan is to use the federal’s control over medication (such as the abortion drug RU-486) to push his agenda.
Uncle Fester is beginning to realise that National’s MPs are happy to be in the Coalition when it suits them. Otherwise, they will make their own arrangements.
Barnaby Joyce… Come on down!
8 Hilariously, an Adelaide rugby union club was awarded a $500,000 grant under the scheme, for new female change rooms, despite not fielding a women’s team.
8. More return to work
The We-want-to-keep-WFH army is pushing back. Amazon Web Services’ CEO had told his employees to get back to work – for five days per week.
Nuh, was the reply. The CEO was “dismissing their humanity” the employees said. But, also showing a little more technical nous, they said that the decision was a “non-data driven” decision.
Ouch to a data-driven CEO.
But CEO was unmoved. And responded with his own non-data driven statement: “there are other companies around.”
9. House of Lords’ DCM?
The UK’s new PM is keen to do many things, one of which is to abolish the remaining hereditary seats (about 11% of the 804 peers) in the House of Lords, the UK parliament’s legislative upper house.
Its predecessor, the Magnum Concilium (Great Council), was created around 927 AD to advise the kings of England. So, it’s been around for some time. Change does not come easily. Which gives rise to:
“How many lords does it take to change a lightbulb?”
“OK, how many?”
“Change? What do you mean, ‘change,’ my dear boy?”
Snippets from all over
1. Giuliani finds that its business as usual for the courts
Two days after Rudy Giuliani hailed Donald Trump’s “victory for the ages”, a New York court gave the president-elect’s former lawyer a week to hand over a Mercedes-Benz and a collection of luxury watches he owes to two poll workers he defamed after Trump’s 2020 election defeat. (Financial Times)
Wry & Dry comments: the Trumpster’s inauguration will come too late to pardon Giuliani.
2. UK and European growth forecasts slashed
Goldman Sachs has slashed its forecast for British and European economic growth next year amid fears Donald Trump will slap taxes on imported goods from around the world. (UK Telegraph)
Wry & Dry comments: Forecasts are difficult, especially about the future.
3. Ireland’s snap election
Ireland’s prime minister called a snap election, to be held on November 29th. Polls suggest that the governing centre-right coalition will win. (The Times)
Wry & Dry comments: A deepening crisis within Sinn Fein, the main opposition party, has bolstered the coalition.
4. Boeing’s strike ends
A two-month strike at Boeing ended as workers voted to accept a 38% pay rise over the next four years. (Economist)
Wry & Dry comments: the world breathes a sigh of relief.
5. Peak iPhone has already passed
Apple has warned investors that future products may never be as profitable as its iPhone business, as it pushes into unproven new markets such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality headsets. (Financial Times)
Wry & Dry comments: Back to what consultants call a ‘cash cow’.
It figures
- 0.25%: US – the cut in official interest rates to 4.5-4.75%.
- 0.25%: UK – the cut in official interest rates to 4.75%.
- 0.00%: Australia – the cut in official interest rates.
And to soothe your troubled mind…
“It’s not just Kamala, it’s a Democratic Party which increasingly has become a party of identity politics, rather than understanding that the vast majority of people in this country are working class. This trend of workers leaving the Democratic Party started with whites, and it has accelerated to Latinos and Blacks.”
Democrat Senator Bernie Sanders, onetime wannabe president, speaking after his party was decimated.
Wry & Dry comments: Unarguably, the most sensible ever utterance from Sanders. And the only senior Democrat to call it as it was.
Disclaimer
The comments in Wry & Dry do not necessarily reflect those of First Samuel, its Directors or Associates.
Cheers!
Anthony