Wry & Dry: a cynical and irreverent review of the week in politics, economics and life. For intelligent Readers who disdain the trivial.
Investment Matters
Craig provides insights on:
- the latest inflation data and how clients’ portfolios are positioned
- his research trip to Western Australia, where he met with key executives of:
- Aquirian Limited
- Emeco
- Matrix Composites
- Dirty Clean Food
In a hats off to Investment Matters, Wry & Dry notes its prescient inflation comment on 7 November, which included the following:
“While global inflation has shown tentative signs of moderation, the Australian experience highlights the structural persistence of price pressures in ‘non-tradable’ (i.e. services, utilities, and administration) goods and services. Non-tradables represent the most domestically driven component of inflation, are deeply connected to labour market conditions, administered prices, and sectoral concentration… We have positioned your portfolio for persistent inflation.”
To read Investment Matters, you can still just click on the link at the bottom of this week’s Wry & Dry. Or here.
Wry & Dry’s musings…
Treasurer Grim Jim has an inflation induced toothache that won’t go away in a hurry. Collingwood’s 2018 Grand Final loss may help the South Australian Liberals. Tsar Vlad plays Trumpster like a balalaika, again. Burka Hanson goes berko.
1. The importance of being earnest
Grim Jim’s usual toothsome visage this week was transformed into one of being earnest. This is so important when confronted by bad economic news and budget reality.
Like a phoenix1, the death hand of inflation has risen from the ashes. A figure of 3.8% in the year to October, above the RBA’s expectations, would be a sharp toothache to Grim Jim. Add the fall in unemployment in October and it probably means that the next interest move might be… up. And a decline will not be until 2027.
If there is one message that Grim Jim, and state treasurers, should take away from the data it is not possible to sustainably subsidise away inflation. But Readers can head off to Sportsbet and wager some of their hard earned on whether Grim Jim will extend the federal government’s energy price subsidy that expires on 31 December.
Wry & Dry will allow the media to further excoriate Grim Jim. And move on… to him being questioned why it was necessary to cut the budgets of federal departments by up to 5% when the budget was, as he often stated, “in sound shape.” He said it was all about departments “reprioritising their spending.” Well, that response fooled no-one. Except the Greens.
Perhaps he should be a little more, well, open, in view of the cost of running the federal public service rising by 38% in the four years of his stewardship. That’s 8.4% p.a., more than a little above inflation.
Hence Grim Jim’s earnest countenance this week. Or was it really a toothache?
1 The phoenix is a legendary bird symbolising rebirth, immortality and transformation, known for its cycle of dying in flames and rising anew from its ashes.
2. The importance of beating Collingwood
It now seems possible that a third state Liberal leader will be given the DCM before Christmas. And for the third time a young, first term female has a chance at sipping from the poisoned chalice. The deck chairs are being moved in South Australia.
Ashton Hurn is being touted as the new saviour for the Croweaters. She is a proven media performer, Wry & Dry’s spies report. But more importantly, she is also the sister of Shannon Hurn, former West Coast Eagles AFL premiership captain. The brother was captain of the team that defeated Collingwood in 2018.
This should ensure at the next election Ashton’s Liberal leadership will gain votes from seventeen eighteenths of South Australians. She will need them.
3. Tsar Vlad continues the mirage of peace in Ukraine
Trumpster’s hapless property developer cum deal-maker Steve Witkoff has once again talked up a big Ukraine peace deal, which in turn led Trumpster to talk it up even more. And to demand the deal be agreed by Ukraine within five days (i.e. by yesterday).
That’s a bit unfair on President Zelensky, as again he wasn’t a party to the negotiations about the future of his country. And European leaders found out from news media headlines.
But, once again, it doesn’t matter. Tsar Vlad now says he won’t sign a deal whilst Zelensky is still president. He could have said that some years ago. And he obviously won’t sign an agreement that doesn’t suit him, as there is no pressing reason to do so.
Further, if there was ever any doubt about Trumpster’s attitude as to what is important in the geopolitical world, it was erased this week. It has now been revealed that Witkoff had been giving advice to Tsar Vlad on how to get Trumpster to agree to Tsar Vlad’s demands. When asked about this, Trumpster said that Witkoff was doing “what a dealmaker does.”
Statecraft has become dealmaking. Witkoff sees the negotiations as nothing more than banging out a property transaction. The rest of the world knows that the starting point should be to have an outcome that allows Ukraine to survive as an independent country, sovereign in every way.
There is little in Tsar Vlad’s demands and Witkoff’s acquiescence that meet the requirement. But the reality is that there is currently no incentive for Tsar Vlad to slow down his costly creeping occupation. And, currently Trumpster is too cowardly to impose harsh oil-related sanctions and/ or military muscle.
There is only one way that Trumpster is going to get a spine and agree to an outcome that guarantees Ukraine’s future independence and sovereignty. And that is if someone tells him that he will win a Nobel Peace Prize.
4. Last week of parliament for 2025
It was a crazy last-sitting-week-before-Christmas.
Readers may have missed the leader of an Australian political party currently enjoying a 16% voter poll wearing an above-the-knee mini-burka in the Australian Senate. Ms. Hanson did not follow up her performance with a reason why she offended people of any faith. So, Wry & Dry can only assume that she was suffering from a bad case of RDS.2
Wry & Dry will start a GoFundMe campaign to employ the necessary men-in-white-coats to take her to a galaxy far, far away.
And former Liberal Leader Peter Dutton revealed that he had asked former deputy PM Barnaby Joyce to quit parliament, because he was concerned for Barnaby’s health. This arose from a late-night photo of a very well refreshed and very horizontal Mr. Joyce attempting to speak into a mobile phone.
And the lights were dimmed in the House, because of an electrical fault. Opposition members switched on mobile phone flashlights and pointed them at Energy Minister Bowen.
2 Relevance Deprivation Syndrome.
5. RBA leads the way in unproductivity
It’s sort of weird. The RBA, that champion of increasing Australia’s labour productivity, has now turned its coat. And has encouraged its employees to take eight ‘well-being days’ off each year, without any reason for the absence. This will be part of an employees’ personal leave allowance, which is up to 18 days per annum.
Readers might like to know that ABS data shows that public service labour productivity has declined by 9% since 2022. In 2024, ABS figures also show public sector workers took 13.1 sick days a year on average, a third more than available to private sector workers.
Isn’t it good to know that the RBA is encouraging its employees to take even more.
6. Trumpster’s net approval hits new low
There is information in the below chart.
Chart source: The Economist 27 November 2025.
Voters in only 10 of 50 states have given Trumpster a positive approval rating: Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, Utah, Nebraska, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia and Alabama.
7. Sunken treasure
The claimants are queueing up. The most lucrative shipwreck in history, lying at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea, has been found. The good ship San José, having plundered the gold and silver mines of Bolivia and Peru and the emerald mines of Columbia, was on its way back to Spain when it was sunk in 1708 by the Royal Navy.
And everyone wants a piece of the booty, valued at billions of dollars.
A US salvage company claims to have found the wreckage in the 1980s, and is demanding $10bn in compensation.
Spain argues that the San José is part of its national heritage because it sailed under the Spanish flag and was a state-owned warship.
Colombia asserts jurisdiction because the wreck lies within its territorial waters near Cartagena.
Indigenous groups from Bolivia and Peru argue the treasure was mined by their ancestors under colonial exploitation.
But a Royal Navy ship sent it to the bottom of the sea. If the San José struck its colours, it will have surrendered before sinking. In that case the treasure would be British, not Spanish.
And having just read about the UK’s disastrous budget, it’s clear the Brits need the dosh.
8. Sudan ethnic cleansing update
A further 2,000 – 5,000 black Muslims have been executed by RSF Arab Muslims this month. There is no end in sight to the genocide.
Greta, where are you? You are needed in Sudan. And those Sunday protest marches in Melbourne must surely return.
9. It’s getting ridiculous
It’s not only in the Bankrupt State of Victoria that those magnificent consultant words ‘cost-benefit’ analysis have been lost.
In the UK, someone (they-the-UK-taxpayer?) is spending £700m at the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station on measures expected to save 0.083 salmon and 0.028 sea trout each year. Including all fish potentially saved by the measures, the cost is £280,000 per fish.
Could it be that mitigation measures exceed the level of risk?
Readers might be familiar with the massively over budget HS2 London to Birmingham railway project. More than £100mn was spent on a ‘bat protection tunnel’ to shield a nearby population of 300 bats. That’s £333,000 per bat.
The UK Treasury implicitly values a human life (‘Value of Prevented Fatality’) at about £2.2m.3 This means that a bat is valued at about one sixth of the average Brit.
Which probably says as much about the average Brit as it does about the UK’s disproportionate approach to assessing local environmental impact.
3 Written questions and answers – Written questions, answers and statements – UK Parliament
10. Join the dots
The list of donors to Trumpster’s Transition to Power has been released. It includes:
- Linda McMahon, who became Secretary of Education
- Howard Lutnick became Secretary of Commerce
- Steve Witkoff became Special Envoy to the Middle East
- Stanley Woodward Jnr became a senior official in the Justice Department
- Dominick Gerace II became US Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio
Any link between a person making a donation and a subsequent appointment in the administration is purely coincidental.
Snippets from all over
US data collection reaches UK
The Trump administration has told American diplomats in the UK to collect data on crimes committed by migrants, saying British voters have been “let down” on immigration by Conservative and Labour politicians alike. (The Times)
Wry & Dry comments: The memo was sent to embassies across Europe as well as Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
Brazil’s former president gets jail time. Lots of it.
Brazil’s Supreme Court has ordered that right-wing former president Jair Bolsonaro begin serving his prison sentence of 27 years and three months for plotting a coup after he lost the last election. (BBC)
Wry & Dry comments: Would the sentence have been lighter had Trumpster not intervened by trying to bully the incumbent president with higher tariffs for Brazil?
Netflix to bid for UK Premier League
Netflix will consider bidding for some Premier League TV rights after narrowly losing out on deals to show matches in UEFA’s club competitions. (The Times)
Wry & Dry comments: The bidding will get ridiculous.
Billionaire pardoned by Trumpster accused of funding Hamas
The billionaire Binance founder pardoned by Donald Trump has been accused of facilitating millions of dollars’ worth of payments to Hamas in the wake of its attack on Israel on October 7 2023. (Financial Times)
Wry & Dry comments: Join the Trumpster’s dots. Binance is the world’s largest crypto exchange.
Judge dismisses trumped up charges
A federal judge on Monday dismissed criminal charges against both former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, ruling that the prosecutor President Trump chose to bring the cases was unlawfully appointed. (Wall Street Journal)
Wry & Dry comments: Trumpster’s acolytes will appeal. Of course.
It figures
- 3.8%: Australia – inflation in year to October, exceeding RBA’s forecasts. If there were ever any doubt, lower interest rates are OTD.4
- 88.7: USA – Consumer confidence in September, down from 95.5 in August to the second lowest in five years.
- 0.2%: USA – Retails sales increase in September, below Wall Street expectations.
4 Out the door.
And to soothe your troubled mind…
“The inquiry does not have to (??) be avoided if at all possible.”
Baroness Hallett, UK’s Covid-19 Inquiry.
Wry & Dry comments: Dan Ands. Come on down.
Disclaimer
The comments in Wry & Dry do not necessarily reflect those of First Samuel, its Directors or Associates.
Cheers!