Posts tagged as:

australia

Who are the big carbon emitters?

4 March 2010

Earlier this week, @pureandapplied brought to my attention the emissions data that has been published by the Department of Climate Change in Australia. Their report comprises data for the 2008-09 reporting year provided to the Greenhouse and Energy Data Officer by corporations whose greenhouse gas emissions exceeded 125 kilotonnes*. A few corporations are missing from [...]

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The Mule on Mortgages

13 February 2010

So you’ve saved up a deposit for your first house, you want to take advantage of the government’s first home owner grant while you still can, and the bank is actually prepared to lend you money. But how much should you borrow?

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Rethinking the basis for the Australia Day holiday

25 January 2010

January 26 is a nettlesome date for the official celebration of the Australian nation and as a commemoration of our colonial foundation. Apart from the significant nuisance that it falls so close to the end of the holiday season when our minds and emotions are trying to deal with more pressing obligations, it really asks a serious philosophical and moral question.

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Hot and Dry Days Ahead for Australia

13 November 2009

Earlier this month, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology released the October figure for the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI). It showed a precipitous plunge of almost 20 points down to -14.6. Just how significant a drop this is can be seen in the chart below, which shows the distribution of monthly changes in the SOI going [...]

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Petrol Price Update

21 October 2009

Oil prices have been heading up, but so has the Australian dollar. So, petrol prices in Sydney for October will have fallen since September.

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Crime Around The Corner

10 September 2009

Observant visitors to this blog may have noticed the recent appearance of a “wiki” button at the top of the page. This links to the recently established Stubborn Mule wiki, which I plan to use as a repository of information relevant in some way to the blog. Since so many of the posts here focus [...]

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Malcolm Turnbull’s Word Cloud

20 August 2009

My last post looked at the favourite words of Australia’s prime minister, Kevin Rudd. In the interests of balance, I will now turn the word cloud lens onto the opposition leader, Malcolm Turnbull. Turnbull’s speeches are conveniently assembled online and the graphic below illustrates the frequency of his words from speeches made in 2009. Unlike [...]

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Deleveraging and Australian Property Prices

22 July 2009

A few weeks ago, I had a preliminary look at Australian property prices. That post focused on rental yields and argued that the fact that property prices have consisently outpaced inflation over the last 10-15 years can be associated with a steady decline in rental yields which has been matched by a decline in real [...]

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Park the Debt Truck!

16 July 2009

About two months ago, I tried to bring some perspective to concerns about growing government debt in Australia. Last week the opposition has rolled out the “debt truck” to add to the hysteria about growing government debt, so I feel compelled to return to the subject for another attempt.
Last time I looked at net debt [...]

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Australian Property Prices

30 June 2009

Property prices have always been a popular topic of conversation in Sydney, but the subject has become more contentious since the onslaught of the Global Financial Crisis. Views on prospects for Australian property prices range from the bleakly pessimistic to the wildly optimistic. Iconoclastic economist Dr Steve Keen is one of the more prominent pessimists [...]

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