Paul Krugman - The Fly in Bush's Ointment

My SBS Dateline interview with Paul Krugman. Mark Davis's introduction:Now to one of George Bush's most persistent critics. Until the emergence of Democrat leader John Kerry, Paul Krugman had virtually become the leader of the opposition in America, an unusual position for an academic economist. His column on business and economics...

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They've taken you for a ride, Mark.

That's the concluding line to Ross Gittins' assessement of Latham's superannuation promises in this morning's Sydney Morning Heral...

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Forget the spin! It's a record record.

The Australian recording industry should be congratulating itself. Both for pushing CD sales to an all-time record high and for keeping this fact out of the initial news reports.The announcement from ARIA is (perhaps deliberately) hard to read.For one thing, there are no comparisons with past sales going back more than a year.But late last year ARIA blessed me with a spreadsheet showing sales by category going back to 1982.Reading...

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Tell me it isn’t true!

This reads as if I am angry.Latham wants to cut the already hugely concessional rate of tax on superannuation to zero. [* see update]The AFR deadpans: “The superannuation industry has reacted favourably.”Well, yes – but the biggest winners would be Australia’s highest income earners. They are the people who put the most into super (both because they have the most to spare and because of its generous tax treatment, which Latham...

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The four billion dollar man

For the two months or so I have been working on a story which went to air on SBS TV's Dateline on Wednesday 10 March. As you can see if you follow the link there is no transcript on the SBS site "on legal advice".The story is about an Australian company, Commercial IBT Pty Ltd. It has a banking licence in the offshore financial centre of Labuan, Malaysia. It describes itself and the bank this way...COMMERCIAL IBT BANK, Licensed...

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