Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site
Forgot your password?
Subscribe

Keywords: Gfc

  • ECONOMICS

    Chinese economy a work in progress

    • David James
    • 14 September 2015
    1 Comment

    The recent ructions in the Chinese stock market set off great consternation in global financial markets, but for the most part this was a display of ignorance. One of the reasons China’s influence on global markets has been so beneficial, since at least 2007, is that its economy and financial markets are so different.

    READ MORE

  • The questionable good that our public policy serves

    • Elenie Poulos
    • 02 April 2015
    4 Comments

    Humans have always pursued wealth and the power it affords, but only relatively recently has the world itself become organised around the service of that wealth. The systems and structures which define the way our world works are financial, geared to the making of profit. They are global and buoyed by governments whose domestic and foreign policies ensure their support. ‘Social good’ and the ‘common good’ are assumed to be economic neoliberalism, and what’s in the ‘public interest’ is whatever advances the neoliberal economic agenda.  

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    The financial crisis the Government wants us to have

    • Colin Long
    • 09 February 2015
    19 Comments

    The Coalition Government falsely claims that Medicare co-payments and cuts to welfare and publicly funded institutions such as the CSIRO and the ABC are necessary to 'fix Labor's mess'. There are indeed structural problems with the economy, but essentially the plan is to strip the public sector by cutting universal access to a range of services that also includes tertiary education, to create a dominant free market that marginalises Australians on low incomes.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Australia turns its back on a world in need

    • Paul O'Callaghan
    • 12 December 2014
    14 Comments

    As we prepare to mark the tenth anniversary of the Boxing Day tsunami, Australia's proud achievement in being the largest per capita provider of overseas aid at the time is being overshadowed by reports of further devastating government cuts to our aid program. Successive cuts - including 20 per cent in the May Budget - mean that we are starting to be seen as a country turning inwards. 

    READ MORE
  • ECONOMICS

    Australia's delayed GFC

    • David James
    • 08 September 2014
    7 Comments

    What is only now starting to come into focus is the extent to which the whole economy is in hock to house prices. A sharp fall in the housing market will put intense pressure on our major lending institutions, leading to a deeply depressing effect on all parts of the economy. The regulators, as ever, are taking a hands-off approach.

    READ MORE
  • MARGARET DOOLEY AWARD

    Inequality matters

    • Harry Maher
    • 20 August 2014
    14 Comments

    Inequality is dangerous. And inequality is at a near all-time high. At its core, the Government’s recent budget not only engenders but actively exults in the creation and maintenance of inequality, a phenomenon rapidly expanding not just in Australia, but around the world.

    READ MORE
  • ECONOMICS

    SMSFs offer 'pension fund socialism'

    • David James
    • 13 August 2014
    1 Comment

    In 1976 management thinker Peter Drucker said the real owners of the stock market were workers, through their pension funds. A similar broadening of ownership has occurred in Australia since the creation of compulsory superannuation. But intermediaries called fund managers still stood between the people and ultimate control of their financial destiny, until the rise of the Self Managed Super Fund (SMSF).

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Clive Palmer's world of surprises

    • Michael Mullins
    • 14 July 2014
    9 Comments

    Clive Palmer is thwarting some of the inequities in the Coalition’s Budget and legislative program. He appears to stand for policy that is confused and inconsistent, and possibly self-interested. But in joining hands with Al Gore he has shown himself capable of forging alliances with business and other entrepreneurs, for the common good of humanity. Fellow mining magnate Twiggy Forrest got together with Pope Francis to promote the abolition of slavery. Perhaps the Pope is on Clive’s list.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    The peacemaker pope

    • Bruce Duncan
    • 24 April 2014
    7 Comments

    Quite striking is the similarity between the warm response to Pope John XXIII half a century ago and to Pope Francis today. Both broke through the gilded cage of outdated conventions and stereotyped expectations. Both stepped over barriers of ideology or religion to evoke bonds of a common humanity committed to promoting the wellbeing of all people, especially the poor and marginalised. The contexts were of course quite different.

    READ MORE
  • ECONOMICS

    Financial advisers can be more than bookies

    • David James
    • 26 March 2014
    6 Comments

    Removing the requirement that financial advisers act in the best interest of their clients will reveal financial advisers for what they really are: salespeople for the banks' wealth management platforms. Tony Abbott argues that the changes will remove 'red tape' and declaimed: 'We're creating the biggest bonfire of regulations in our country's history.' This is a duplicitous use of language that misunderstands how the finance sector works.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Metaphysical selfie

    • Philip Salom
    • 25 March 2014
    1 Comment

    Post-God voices of you complained: there were so many of you there were none. And, pre-God, there was less than one of you. That's a hard call. That's a stern said. Back off in the beginning colloids of an all-or-nothing exploded you. How scary are you? The Dough-maker's hand was poised, unseen in the shadows. Then in tactile, alarmingly, quarkily, scrolling and shaping you. A life-hand a touch. Retreating into the dark.

    READ MORE
  • ECONOMICS

    Deciphering capitalism's corrupt metaphors

    • David James
    • 07 February 2014
    15 Comments

    'All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others'. This was George Orwell's parody in Animal Farm of the vicious use of language in communist states. It was one of his memorable depictions of how the absurdities of language not only reflect evil, but also predicate it. Language was a tool of oppression in communist states. In capitalism it is no less vicious.

    READ MORE