Wry & Dry: a cynical and irreverent review of the week in politics, economics and life. For intelligent Readers who disdain the trivial.
Investment Matters
This week Craig takes a deep dive into Australia’s GDP data…
- population growth has lifted GDP, but not living standards
- this is a stagflation risk, not just a weak-growth story
- the budget and Iran make the starting point harder
And concludes with: “your portfolio is not the economy.” Read this week’s Investment Matters.
1. Wry & Dry’s ponderings…
It’s a bumper issue this week. The need to find another submarine has sent the secondhand market into frenzy. The clear loser in the latest polling is the hapless Coalition: really? 20% is all it can muster. Tsar Vald’s Davos rained upon. Victoria: another pre-election announcement of post-election action.
2. SubsRUs
SubsRUs got a big boost this week, with the news that Uncle Albo is going to buy not two, but three second-hand nuclear-powered submarines. Apparently, there is a global shortage of brand-new submarines – something to do with supply chain disruption.
In view of Uncle Albo’s keen desire to act as a wise steward of we-the-taxpayer’s-money, he said that the purchase will be put out to tender, online at www.SubsRUs.com. Each country with nuclear-powered submarines will be invited to submit a price at which it will sell one of its vessels. The US will be excluded from the tender.
Readers should welcome this policy. The tender process will ensure a keen price. And consider the range of subs available: from the inscrutable but expensive (via Emperor Eleven), through the modern but temperamental (M. Macron) to the leaky but cheap (Tsar Vlad).
Of course, each tenderer will need to provide a three-year unlimited kilometre warranty, with free scheduled servicing and spare parts.
In a masterstroke of offshoring, Uncle Albo has appointed Chris Bowen, Minister for Renewable Energy, to move to Tehran and to negotiate and administer a twenty-year supply of reactor-grade uranium from Iran. “I’m confident of a great deal; Minister Bowen’s ability to talk under wet cement should tire out the Iranians,” he said.
3. Pauline: flying too close to the sun.
There must be a mistake. What were they thinking? Really? Pauline Hanson’s One Policy One Nation now has a primary vote higher than Uncle Albo: 31% (+4) v. 28% (-3). Then there is daylight. Then the Lib+Gnats: 20% (-2%) and Greens: 12% (-1). ‘Others’ again are wooden spooners.
Wry & Dry is all for democracy, but this is ridiculous. Ms. Hanson as PM? She couldn’t run a bath, much less a fish and chip shop. She is certifiable, unstable, etc. Don’t voters know that?
Actually, they probably do know. The reality is that the poll tells more about how the punters feel about Labor, Libs and the Gnats than it does about the merits of Ms Hanson. The three major parties have listened to their “noisy echo-chambers of woke partisans” for far too long. And ignored them.
Moreover, it is clearly erroneous to label all those One Nation supporters as far-right nutters. It’s almost one third of Australian voters. Too big to ignore.
The possible saving grace is that Ms. Hanson is in the Senate; a PM must be in the House. She will need to find a House seat in a by-election within about 12 months. Or hand the reins to Barnaby Joyce, who she recruited from the Gnats. Barnaby is not quite the nutter that is Hanson, and he does have an air of gravitas when needed and much experience (two short stints as Deputy PM).
There is a lot of water to yet go over the dam. And, either way, the cartoonists will have a field day.
4. Ukraine rains on Tsar Vlad’s Davos
Readers will know that there is a now-famous and unmissable annual business-economic-virtue signalling event call ‘Davos’. It’s held at a place called Davos, in Switzerland. To signify its importance to the lexicon, Davos has become a verb: “I will Davos next year.”
In competition, in 2006, Tsar Vlad upgraded an economic conference to be under his wing, and commenced the ‘St Petersburg International Economic Forum (catchily termed SPIEF, therefore “I will Spief next year”?). This year’s Spief began on Wednesday, with an aim of projecting an image of Russian confidence and economic resilience.
The economic resilience part went OTD1 some time ago as Tsar Vlad’s Ukraine adventure got bogged and is now in reverse. And then there is national security. It was no coincidence that was the day when Ukraine launched a fleet of drones that smashed into the St Petersburg oil terminal, a major refinery, and a naval base near the city.
Tsar Vlad has egg-on-face. He will be grumpy.
1 Out The Door.
5. Victoria: “…but not yet”
In yet another pre-election announcement of post-election action, Victorian Premier Allan has given Victoria’s anti-corruption watchdog more powers to tackle crime on the state’s infrastructure projects.
What she didn’t say, but was in the fine print, was that it will take at least 18 months for the changes to take effect.
Allan has done an amazing job of obfuscating her way through hundreds of media conferences since mid-2024, when the widespread graft, corruption and abuse on Victoria’s infrastructure projects became known. “Nothing to see here” has been her refrain.
Sigh. She hasn’t even conceded that there was and is corruption.
6. Denmark and taxes
Denmark’s new government will cut company tax rates to 19% from 22%. And eliminate two tax bands for the highest income earners – which it needed to do; the highest marginal tax rate is about 57%.
Readers may have noticed that the new government is a coalition of three left wing parties and a centrist party.
Speaking of tax, just coz…
7. Victoria: grand theft auto
Spot the outlier.
Chart source: AFR 4 June 2026
8. Magnificent Seven
One chart says it all.
Chart source: Financial Times 4 June 2026
Where to from here for the AI frenzy? Will it be like the railway boom of the 19th century or the dotcom boom of the 1990s, with each leaving useful infrastructure. Or like the South Sea Bubble?
9. Nice work. If you can get it.
Readers will remember the BBC television interview when the former prince, Andrew, Duke of York, Baron of This, Earl of That, brilliantly tossed himself under the bus on global telly.
He played the victim, but badly. And eventually got the DCM from all of his entitlements, titles, etc. He, however, always remained somewhat surprised and bewildered at the fuss. And since being arrested (but not yet charged) for possible dark deeds arising from his association with a paedophile, has more-or-less sunk without trace.
Until now. The UK National Audit Office has reported that although he paid a peppercorn rent (i.e. zero) for two decades of living in his Windsor estate, he sublet three cottages on its grounds to generate personal income. And collected payments even after he had moved out.
Nice work, if you can get it.
10. Solomon Islands: too little, too late
Readers will recall how the Coalition’s foreign minister, Julie Bishop, spent most of her foreign travel in the shopping capitals of London, Paris and New York. And meeting the luminaries of the Western World.
The sovereign states in the Pacific were unknown to her, as she flew over them on the way to Washington or New York. But not unknown to Emperor Eleven.
In 2022, the Solomon Islands’ PM Manasseh Sogavare signed a secret ‘security pact’ with Emperor Eleven. This sent both the Australian government (then the Coalition) and the opposition (soon to be government) into conniptions.
Well, this week, it seems that Uncle Albo has undone much of his predecessor’s negligence. And signed a new comprehensive treaty with the Solomons. Doubtless there will be some dosh involved.
11. New World v The Rest
It’s easy to take one’s eyes off the ball, as it were. Everyone is focussed on the rampaging US stock market. Well, the top ten stocks. Driving the S&P500 up over 25% in the past 12 months. And unnoticed is South Korea’s Kospi, which is up over 200% over the same period.
But the insight that is missing is the trifurcation of the world’s major stock markets.
The US remains dominant with 56% of global market cap. However, South Asian and Asian markets now account for 33%, with the Old World holding about 12%. [Note: this data is not developed markets, i.e. those countries in the MSCI World Index, which index excludes all Asia except Japan].
Of course, the Asian markets are more volatile. But there’s some weight and energy there that the Old World is missing.
12. Most important issue for Americans is not Iran
It is rightly said that there is never a test cricket match in which a record of some sort is not broken. So, it is with each week of Trumpster’s reign: every week his net approval rating declines to a new low.
On Monday, his net approval rating hit -25, the lowest since these records began in 2009. But, why, Wry & Dry hears Readers ask. Wry & Dry has parsed the surveys – and it’s not all about Iran, immigration or global warming. It’s the economy, stoopid.2
Of course, many Americans wouldn’t be able to join the dots from the Iran war to gasoline prices. Much less know where Iran is. However, it’s probably fair to say that if the Strait of Hormuz was reopened, eventually the price of gasoline would fall. But by then, the damage might be unrepairable.
2 The phrase was initially and successfully used by Bill Clinton in his 1992 presidential election campaign. Of course, Clinton put down his own moniker for presidential stoopidity; Lewinsky was a mere 22-year-old when seduced by Clinton. A somewhat large power imbalance.
13. Renamed
A US judge has ruled that Trumpster’s name must be removed from the John F. Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts. Only Congress has the authority to rename the centre. Which it hadn’t.
This will come as a great blow to Trumpster, a well known patron of the performing arts. Readers should remember his support for the NCAA Wrestling Championships and UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) fights.
14. Property stat
According to the ABS, there are about 4,750 dwellings in Mt Eliza, a sleepy bayside suburb some 50 kilometres from Melbourne. Currently, there are 458 dwellings listed for sale. And that excludes those for sale, but not listed. That number is believed to be the about the same as listed. So, is 20% of Mt Eliza for sale?
Who cares? Well, perhaps the owners of property on which the homes are known collectively as The Block.
Y’see, these built-for-reality-television homes are supposed to be each sold for $4-5m. Collectively, the Mt Eliza Block is a quintuple agglomeration of townhouses. Doubtless well made, with Grohe tapware, Miele dishwashers and Gaggenau ovens.
But one might be forgiven for pondering what colour will be the very bottom line on the telly company’s annual report’s segment reports. A bit of red, perhaps.
15. Scotch egg on face
Which brings Wry & Dry to Nicola Sturgeon. She led the Scottish National Party for almost a decade and drove the failed independence referendum. Readers will recall that the referendum had less to do with nationhood than being a device for her moral and social imperatives. Which is why, in the end, it failed.
Which brings Wry & Dry to her husband, Peter Murrell. Who has pleaded guilty to embezzlement of £400,000. Sadly, for Ms Sturgeon, the source of the loot was the SNP itself, and he was then its CEO. He reported to her. But all of that is another matter.
Back to Ms Sturgeon, who went on telly (BBC, of course) to plead ignorance. Ignorance of the large (£81,000: Jaguar iPace, £124,550: Niesmann+Bischoff motorhome) and the small (£3,232: Jura Giga 5 Cromo coffee machine, £3,070: Husqvarna robotic lawnmower) items that were littered about their home.3
But, she chose to play the wronged wife – the victim of a man who betrayed her. Err, hold the phone. This is not a sexist conspiracy. She was not just Murrell’s wife, she was his boss, leader of the party and at one time its treasurer. She was advised time and again that he shouldn’t be treasurer. Sure, she is not responsible for her husband’s crimes. But she is accountable to those who gave sums to the party.
Not a word of contrition or empathy for those Scots who gave the dosh to the SNP. And the world knows how the Scots feel about their money. They will not forgive and forget.
3 A survey for The Sunday Times found that only 20% of Scots accept that Ms Sturgeon did not know about crimes committed by her husband.
Snippets from all over
Zelensky proposes tea with Tsar Vlad
President Zelensky has written to President Putin to propose a face-to-face meeting aimed at ending the war in Ukraine, and to warn him that Moscow’s catastrophic invasion could cause a revolution in Russia. (UK Times 5 June)
Wry & Dry comments: Trumpster seems happy to forget about Ukraine. Too long without a deal.
UK private school student numbers drop on VAT
The number of children at [UK] private schools has dropped by 30,000 since Labour applied VAT [i.e. GST] to private school fees. (UK Telegraph 4 June)
Wry & Dry comments: More than 100 schools have closed since the VAT was applied.
Trumpster’s war drains US oil stocks
Donald Trump’s Iran war has driven US oil stocks to their lowest level in two decades as his administration drains stockpiles to contain surging prices and exporters capitalise on the drop in Middle Eastern supply. (Financial Times 4 June)
Wry & Dry comments: Trumpster’s mind is now firmly focussed on being the main component of America’s semiquincentennial. And not on oil.
Another Trumpster set back
Donald Trump has dropped his plan for a $1.8bn “anti-weaponisation” fund that would compensate his political allies for being targeted by the justice system under Joe Biden, following a political backlash from Republicans. (Financial Times 2 June)
Wry & Dry comments: Trumpster’s plan to sue the government for $10bn, then drop the claim in exchange for this munificence from the-the-taxpayer to Trumpster’s allies was probably the most egregious of his acts.
“Nvidia Inside”
Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company, launched a new “superchip” for personal computers. Speaking at an event in Taiwan, Jensen Huang, the boss of the American semiconductor-maker, said he wants to “reinvent the PC” for the age of artificial intelligence. (Economist 2 June)
Wry & Dry comments: Next, there will be Nvidia superchips in Wry & Dry’s fridge.
It figures
- 0.3%: Australia. GDP growth in March quarter, down from 0.9% in December.
- 4.75%: Australia. Increase in minimum wage.
- 1.48: Australia. Fertility rate, the lowest ever. 2.1 is the rate required for a population to reproduce itself.
And to soothe your troubled mind…
“Every meeting I have is: who can we tax to pay benefits to others?”
Pat McFadden, senior cabinet minister to UK PM Starmer, quoted in the so-called Mandelson files (a 1,500 page dump of trash-talking emails, etc relating to his time as UK ambassador to the US).
Wry & Dry comments: Why is anyone surprised?
Disclaimer
The comments in Wry & Dry do not necessarily reflect those of First Samuel, its Directors or Associates.
Cheers!