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A way with words

4 January 2011

Sometimes the things that are unsaid are far more telling than the things said. I had cause to reflect on this when I stumbled across a book on my shelves that I have not opened for many years. The book, entitled “Deutsche Bank: Dates, facts and figures 1870-1993”, is an English translation of the year-by-year [...]

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Where does the money go?

31 December 2010

A regular Mule reader drew my attention to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald (also published in The Age) which attempts to defend Australian banks from some of the criticisms levelled at them in recent months. It is something of a laundry list of points, some accurate, some dubious and has little in the [...]

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The Chinese growth engine

16 December 2010
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As Australia’s economic fortunes continue to surpass the likes of the US, UK and Europe, it is hard to escape a lingering nervousness about what could happen if the mining boom were to collapse. What if the Chinese juggernaut were to falter? Would we be doomed?

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Job guarantee on “Mule Bites”

14 December 2010

Bill Mitchell on the idea of a “Job Guarantee” in the first episode of the “Mule Bites” podcast.

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Polls apart on climate change

7 December 2010

Regular Stubborn Mule guest James Glover (@zebra) turns his statistical expertise on some apparently contradictory polls gauging opinions on climate change. Two polls came out today on the question of whether people believed climate change is real and if so whether it is caused by human activity. The first was a Newspoll published in The [...]

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Coffee day 2

6 December 2010

The CofFEE conference came to a close on Friday. The morning started with some mathematics as Trond Andresen (visiting from Norway) talked us through a simple model of the impact of the Basel capital adequacy rules on money supply and debt. He concluded that an unintended side-effect of the rules was to condemn our economies to exponential growth in private sector [...]

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Coffee day 1

2 December 2010

As promised, I spent the day today “live-tweeting” the first day of the CofFEE conference. However, I was more than outdone by Bill Mitchell. As well as hosting the conference and giving the final presentation of the day, he has already posted a wrap-up of the day. The first few sessions focused on specific employment [...]

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Coffee meeting

30 November 2010

No, I’m not writing this post over a macchiato. The title of the post has nothing to do with caffeinated beverages. Rather, it refers to the annual conference of “CofFEE”, the Centre of Full Employment and Equity, a research centre at the University of Newcastle. The director of the center is Bill Mitchell, who may [...]

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Do your block in!

25 November 2010

Sydney’s property market is a subject that has found its way onto the Stubborn Mule more than once. In this post, regular guest contributor Zebra (James Glover) manages to combine property and television with some now-traditional beer coaster calculations. Channel 9′s high rating renovation show The Block just finished its successful second series on Wednesday [...]

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Bank funding costs

16 November 2010
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Digging into the data suggests that banks are not lying about their funding costs going up, but are they charging too much on mortgages anyway?

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