Welcome to Eureka Street
Looking for thought provoking articles?Subscribe to Eureka Street and join the conversation.
Passwords must be at least 8 characters, contain upper and lower case letters, and a numeric value.
Eureka Street uses the Stripe payment gateway to process payments. The terms and conditions upon which Stripe processes payments and their privacy policy are available here.
Please note: The 40-day free-trial subscription is a limited time offer and expires 31/3/24. Subscribers will have 40 days of free access to Eureka Street content from the date they subscribe. You can cancel your subscription within that 40-day period without charge. After the 40-day free trial subscription period is over, you will be debited the $90 annual subscription amount. Our terms and conditions of membership still apply.
In 1962, Port Kembla was stoked with the dispossessed of the Old World, pouring steel back into the reconstruction of their war-ravaged homelands. Now, it's a ghost town. They're putting together an industrial museum, and that has an ominous ring to it.
Some of the soup van's clients collect cans to sell to a scrap dealer. The work supplements their welfare income and provides a sense of fulfillment. Since the global market crash business has been slow: 'China doesn't want aluminium now.'
On the day the markets bled we rushed to hear Stiglitz's diagnosis. The Nobel Laureate used to be Chief Economist of the World Bank, ending his term in fisty cuffs with the IMF and the US over their financial bullying of developing nations. Stiglitz had schadenfreude written all over his face. (October 2008)
The hand-in-glove nature of Perth business politics was hard to detect when money was cheap. Australia had a credit boom between 1983–1985, but the days of easy money faded. Then came the king wave: the sharemarket crash. (April 1991)
All ideologies, including religions, can rot. They can neglect the view of the human world on which they are based and focus simply on implementing the consequences of their ideas. When this happens the costs in human misery are great.
Circumstantial evidence suggests that during the past few weeks we have seen a massive manipulation of monetary policy to support US bank stocks. The manipulation has been played out in plain view, which, of course, is the best place to hide a secret.
As I walk the streets of Manhattan, things seem much the same as always. Yet newspapers are peppered with references to the market 'cratering', a term that conjures the desolate landscape of the moon. A friend suggested another interpretation: 'A crater is what's left after a massive explosion.'
Recent events both aeronautical and financial have been enough to scare anyone off banks and aeroplanes forever. Global economic chaos is nothing compared with the trauma of being stuck next to a large person on a plane.
On the day the markets bled we rushed to hear Stiglitz's diagnosis. The Nobel Laureate used to be Chief Economist of the World Bank, ending his term in fisty cuffs with the IMF and the US over their financial bullying of developing nations. Stiglitz had schadenfreude written all over his face.
The market crash was driven by fear as much as greed. Greed results from the gap between rich and poor, which leads everyone to feel they are holding on to their way of life by a thread. A truly just economy would be a stable economy.
More people read Inferno and Paradise Lost than Paradiso and Paradise Regained. Perhaps that is why the financial crisis and attempts to resolve it have been received so sullenly: sin and punishment sell better than virtue and reward.
The problems besetting Wall Street investment banks seem a long way from life in downtown Australia. The need to know the context of the economic crisis, and to keep a clear head, has never been more important.
13-24 out of 25 results.