On Saturday night I found myself in Melbourne at the first live performance in 30 years of the reggae band Pressure Drop. The last time Pressure Drop played I probably couldn’t have told you what reggae was. Although I would certainly have heard Eddy Grant’s Electric Avenue on the radio, I was a New Romantic […]
Just over a year ago, I wrote about the digital “crypto-currency” Bitcoin. It has been an eventful year for Bitcoin. Designed to provide a secure yet anonymous, decentralised means for making payments online, the first Bitcoins were virtually minted in 2009. By early 2011, Bitcoin had begun to attract attention. Various sites, including the not-for-profit […]
Recently, a colleague drew my attention to the “Bristol Pound“, an example of a “local currency“. Ah yes, I said, that’s been around for a few years now. Embarrassingly, I later realised I was thinking about the “Brixton Pound“. Having attended many concerts at the legendary Brixton Academy (Nick Cave, Ministry and the Sugarcubes among […]
Another year, another Australia Day. Another Australia Day, another Triple J Hottest 100. And that, of course, means an excellent excuse to set R to work on the chart data. For those outside Australia, the Hottest 100 is a chart of the most popular songs of the previous year, as voted by the listeners of […]
I have been resting on my laurels for too long. Two years ago I had Shocking success tipping a winner for the Melbourne Cup. Needless to say the analysis was entirely bogus, but it was fun. Since then I have been reluctant to tarnish my spotless prediction record, but fortune favours the brave, so I […]
The debt rating agency Standard and Poor’s (S&P) has placed their rating of the US on negative outlook. What this means is that they are giving advance warning that they may downgrade their rating of the US from its current AAA level (the highest possible rating). Their actions were motivated by concern about “very large […]
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?
The last post looked at the increasing margins on Australian mortgages and small business loans. On the way is another post that tries to estimate how much the banks’ own margins have been increasing. Interesting though that may be, the real problem with Australian mortgages has nothing to do with whether bank margins are or are […]
The recent post about Australia’s coal supplies took issue with the convention of quoting coal and other commodity reserves in terms of years remaining at current production levels. The problem is that it is too easy to assume that these figures give a good indication of how long the reserves will actually last, when in […]
Some readers will recall last year’s astonishing correct tip for the Melbourne Cup here on the Mule. I was vaguely contemplating an equally spurious analysis this year, but inspiration has eluded me and so I will instead rest on my thoroughly undeserved laurels and preserve my perfect prediction record.