11 July 2025
Wry & Dry: a cynical and irreverent review of the week in politics, economics and life. For intelligent Readers who disdain the trivial.
Investment Matters…
… is on leave this week.
Wry & Dry’s musings
Now that the excitement of the end of the fiscal year has passed, it’s groundhog week. Consider: the usual Trumpster big statements (e.g. bomb Moscow? Really?); economic teasers (raise GST? Nuh, 10% is easy arithmetic); Victorian Liberal sandpit fights (“how dare you call me right-wing!”); UK increasingly resembling pre-Thatcher shambles, but no Thatcher in sight; federal government focusing on how to tax more rather than spend less; ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
This is why God invented sport.
1. Mr. Albo goes to Beijing
Albo’s plan to boost his lack-lustre frequent flyer miles account after the election was shredded by Trumpster’s fleeing the G-7 in Alberta. Albo also has no desire to meet Trumpster in the White House; why risk meeting Trumpster in front of the world’s cameras, with a couple of 60 Minutes-type gotcha questions ready to be fired?
Better to take a 7-day, all expenses paid (including tips), luxury but twin-share accommodation trip to China. Of course, it will be a week of eating three Chinese meals each day. An Ozempic homecoming for Albo?
But he will get a massive boost to his Qantas points balance. and, in between seeing the sights, he will meet with Emperor Eleven.
As Henry Kissinger, that doyen of international affairs, opined; in diplomacy there are no best choices, only least-worst choices.1 Albo’s problem is as much domestic as foreign. He is a creature of the left, compounded by a sense that most Australians mistrust Trumpster. Australia is in Emperor Eleven’s backyard, economically and geo-politically. And so he wants to appear to be at sort-of arm’s length from the US.
Hence his weird John Curtain foreign affairs speech last weekend, where he pretended that the US just didn’t exist.
But now he wants to put the toothpaste back into the tube of that speech. He’s clearly had some strong feedback. He appears to have directed Foreign Minister Wong to make a correction. Hence Ms. Wong’s speech last night in Malaysia, where she expressed alarm over Emperor Eleven’s strategic ambitions and surging military capabilities. She strongly supported an ongoing US presence in the Indo-Pacific.
How the mandarins in Beijing will read this relationship confection/confusion of Albo/Wong will remain a mystery. However, Albo will feel comfortable with Emperor Eleven – it will be all smiles. Whereas Trumpster’s guests fall into White House verbal bear-traps that are made for that night’s television, Emperor Eleven’s panda-traps and subtle and will take years to evolve.
In a decade, Albo will find that, somehow, he sold Westen Australia to Emperor Eleven.
1One might argue that Kissinger didn’t make the least worst choice when he and Nixon chose to sacrifice Taiwan’s effective sovereignty to save the US’ face over Vietnam. It was the very worst choice. Premier Zhou Enlai played the long game, Nixon wanted ‘four more years’.
2. Interest egg-on-face
Well, this lady’s not for turning. Or, more accurately, for listening to the media’s and financial market’s posturing.
RBA Chief Teller Michele Bullock and most of her tellers this week decided to keep official interest rates unchanged, at 3.85%. This is prudence in action. The RBA “… could wait for a little more information to confirm that inflation remains on track to reach 2.5% on a sustainable basis.”
But Grim Jim threw the toys out of the cot: “It’s not the result millions of Australians were hoping for or what the market was expecting,” he said. Nor, indeed, for what he himself was hoping.
Err, Jim, let Wry & Dry give you the whisper: the reality is that the RBA doesn’t decide interest-rate policy on the basis of what millions of Australians were hoping for or on market expectations. Nor on your well prepared but now shelved media release that “the RBA’s decision showed that government policy was working.”
Save it for next month.
3. A Liberal sprinkling of idiots
The latest Newspoll (Monday 7 July) of the impoverished voters of the Bankrupt State of Victoria made two things clear.
Firstly, that the Liberal idiots to the right of the soup spoon would rather keep fighting internal battles than win the next election. Notwithstanding voters being worried about the level of state debt (78% of voters), law and order (76%), hospitals (71%) and housing (78%) and that Liberal leader Brad Battin would be a better premier than Jacinta Allen (41% to 36%), not only was Labor ahead 2pp (53%/47%), but 60% of voters said that the Liberals were not ready to govern. Ouch.
Yet the Liberal idiocy continues. It was announced on Wednesday that the Supreme Court in September will hear an attempt by five Liberals, led by wannabee politician Colleen Harkin, to block an agreement for the Liberal Party to lend funds to former leader John Pesutto. The famous five fools, encouraged by conservative non-party and interstate bystanders, are determined to keep alive their sandpit fight.
Secondly, how is it that 78% of Victorian voters are worried about the level of state debt and yet 59% support the fiscally ruinous Suburban Rail Loop? The Labor government has done a great job, then, in ensuring that Victorians think someone else will be paying the $1bn per kilometre for the white elephant train set.
Perhaps the next Newspoll should ask “who do think is paying for the Suburban Rail Loop?” With multiple choice answers.
4. Trumpster’s Brazilian
Trumpster has really lost it, tariff-wise. Amid the usual tariff carnage, he now will use tariffs to intervene in a criminal trial in a foreign nation. Good grief!
From 1 August the US will charge a 50% tariff on Brazilian imports because… former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro is on trial over alleged coup attempts against the incumbent government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The US actually has a trade surplus with Brazil, so Trumpster’s usual tariff reason stays in the locker.
Bolsonaro, the leader of Brazil’s political right is a longtime Trump ally. In fact, Bolsonaro said last year that he was banking on Trump to use economic sanctions against da Silva’s government to help him return to power in Brazil.
What does Trumpster owe Bolsonaro?
5. Kristallnacht …
Following the latest episode of violent anti-Semitic activity in Melbourne, almost rightly compared to the Kristallnacht of 1938,2 it has taken a mere 641 days for the federal and Victorian state governments to unambiguously acknowledge and condemn anti-Semitism without the usual obligatory “and Islamophobia.”
The various state governments, the federal government, the respective police forces, and universities have been complicit in the evolution of this vile behaviour. But their craven leaders will now find it very difficult to put the genie back into the bottle.
Whereas 1938’s Kristallnacht was a state-organised pogrom, last weekend’s depravity was a social media inflamed mob-activity.
It would be folly to ascribe the criminal activity only to extreme Muslim anti-Semitic activists. That is one of two threads woven into this tapestry of anti-Semitism. The other is the ‘serial haters’.
For a variety of government and institutional ideological reasons, Victoria has become a fertile hothouse of serial haters; identity groups bound not by shared hatreds, who take comfort and refuge in their collective sense of the righteousness of their cause. Their current hatred is anti-Semitism.
Wry & Dry senses that there is little to be done about the serial haters. They will re-emerge as other opportunities arise to re-group, gather, conspire, complain, protest and do damage. Readers will be aware of the actions in the hydra of UK of extreme groups such as Extinction Rebellion, Earth Liberation Front, and Palestine Action. It’s like whack-a-mole.
There will be brave words and recommendations about the pure anti-Semites, as shown in yesterday’s report of Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism. This seminal document has made sensible and far-reaching recommendations. Albo said that his government will “carefully consider its recommendations.”
Wry & Dry will wait patiently for its implementation and probably in vain for its enforcement. Will Readers actually see universities stripped of funding and those non-residents engaging in anti-Semitic behaviour being deported, as recommended?
Nuh. The government cannot even deport recidivistic and dangerous non-Australian criminals.
There will be a few weeks of ‘tut tutting’ from politicians and media. Then silence. Until the destruction of Jewish property then leads to the destruction of a life.
2 The Kristallnacht ‘Night of Broken Glass’ was an attack on Jews and Jewish property across Germany and Austria on 9-10 November 1938. Orchestrated as part of a systematic and escalating persecution of Jews by the Nazis, the state-organised pogrom was the beginning of a sharp slide into depravity.
6. UK record in a chart
Recently, Wry & Dry broke the news of a new 6-month record for the UK; the number of illegal immigrants crossing the English Channel for a supposedly better life. Well, here’s how it looks:
Chart source: UK Telegraph
7. Trumpster still playing with tariffs.
Sigh. Trumpster just doesn’t get it.
On Monday he impulsively imposed an extra 10% points tariffs on Brics countries (i.e. initially Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa; now joined by Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and UAE). This is because of the ‘anti-American policies of Brics’.
The new tariffs on Russia and Iran will not touch the sides. China will respond in kind.
8. Taxpayers: COP that
Who would have thought that Australia’s delegation to the massive climate conference (COP29) last year in fossil fuel friendly Azerbaijan would turn out to be boondoggle of epic proportions?
Okay, gotta send Climate Change Minister Bowen and his staff. Gotta keep up appearances. The cost of $102,343.69 might be expected.
But wait, there’s more!
How about 75 additional bureaucrats, for an average cost of $20,663. Total cost $1.6m. That’s 42 mandarins from the Climate Change Department; 25 from DFAT; and a couple each from Finance, CSIRO and Agriculture.
And to top it off, for some reason, the Department of Health and Aged Care had one representative attend, as did the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority.
Perhaps there were significant foreign affairs’ matters or aged care issues to personally discuss. Or fiscal regulatory matters.
Err, no. Wry & Dry has scanned the COP29 website for sessions, meetings, mini-conferences or workshops on foreign affairs, aged care and prudential fiscal regulation. Alas, there was nothing for those people to attend. Nothing.
9. When caprice hits the share price
What to do when the company of which you are the main shareholder/CEO/Svengali is beset by massively increased competition from China and your sales are falling? Do you…
- Introduce new products:
- Lower prices;
- Increase advertising: or
- Decide to start a new political party.
Close. But no cigar. The correct answer is d. Elon Musk is going to start the America Party, to challenge the Republicans (and the Democrats).
What has driven Elon Musk to do this?
- He has given up on his Mars project and now has time to spare:
- He wants to finish what he started at DOGE;
- He wants to emulate Trumpster and become president: or
- His desire for revenge against Trumpster.
Close. But no cigar. The correct answer is d. His desire for revenge against Trumpster is greater than his concern for shareholders. This political ally/enemy caprice has cost Tesla’s shareholders 38.7% since Trumpster’s coronation.
But, if this works, the mid-term elections (November 2026) will be a disaster for Trumpster.
Snippets from all over
1. Air India crash
The investigation into last month’s Air India crash is focusing on the actions of the jet’s pilots and doesn’t so far point to a problem with the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, according to people familiar with U.S. officials’ early assessments. (Wall Street Journal)
Wry & Dry comments: Boeing (plane) and GE (engines) are relieved. So far.
2. Europe in decline
JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon warned European leaders they have a competitiveness problem and that they are currently “losing” the battle to rival the US and China. (Financial Times)
Wry & Dry comments: “Europe has gone from 90 per cent US GDP to 65 per cent over 10 or 15 years. That’s not good,” Dimon said at an event in Dublin organised by the Irish foreign ministry. “You’re losing.”
3. Nvidia hits $4tn
Nvidia has become the first company to hit a $4tn market capitalisation, on the back of a rapid rebound for Wall Street technology stocks in recent months. (Financial Times)
Wry & Dry comments: Next comes Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Alphabet (Google).
4. Epstein: no smoking gun
After [US] Attorney General Pam Bondi promised big revelations for months, the Justice Department noted a lack of evidence for conspiracy theories, including a “client list” and a jailhouse murder. (New York Times)
Wry & Dry comments: Case closed. Err, not for the conspiratorists.
5. The sandpit fight is getting bigger
Donald Trump has lashed out at Elon Musk after the billionaire unveiled plans to launch a new US political party, calling him a “train wreck” in an escalation of the feud between the US president and his former ally. (Financial Times)
Wry & Dry comments: Very nasty.
It figures
- 0.0%: Australia. Change in official interest rates. The market expected -0.25% points.
- 0.1%: China. Annual inflation rate. The market expected 0.0%.
And to probe your troubled mind…
“It is likely that Kerr County will experience a flood event in the next year. Such floods could …result in increased damage, injuries, or loss of life.”
Kerr County, Texas, officials, in a report for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, released last October.
Wry & Dry comments: And so it came to pass…
Disclaimer
The comments in Wry & Dry do not necessarily reflect those of First Samuel, its Directors or Associates.
Cheers!
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