* Economic malaise in Australia: I'm sure some people voted for the Coalition out of concern that reforms by Labor would drive down confidence in at least the real estate market. It seems pretty clear, however, that the Coalition win had hardly brought signs of improved confidence to any market. I bet retail is still flat as a tack, and what worse nightmare could any Sydney real estate who specialises in high rise apartments endure than the dramatic cracking appearing in two buildings in under 6 months? (In fact, it will be interesting to see how that affects all "off the plan" sales in every capital city. I wonder if it even has an effect on the country's reputation for tertiary education - it's not exactly the best advertisement for engineering expertise.)
I'm not entirely sure anyone really has a good grip on why there is, more or less, an air of impending doom on our economy. Greg Jericho does a lot of graphing, but it doesn't explain why things seem stuck on "not getting any better".
Does everyone sense we are in some sort of transition, and to what, no one knows? The economy can only bear so many new burger chains and craft beer outlets, I guess, and maybe people are sensing that we're reaching saturation level with them.
* "Summer" movies. Well, it's far from the first holiday movie season for everyone to be complaining about the number of unwarranted sequels - but this one seems to be full of underwhelming entries. I was thinking of seeing Men in Black International, but if a trailer can't come up with much in the way of funny bits in what is meant to be a comedy, I am inclined to believe the lukewarm reviews are right.
* The Trump administration: who has confidence that it won't stumble into/deliberately provoke an unnecessary and dangerous war with Iran? Who (with a brain) thinks the trade war tactics are good for America, let alone the globe? How's that government deficit going? It's a slow moving policy disaster.
* Boris Johnson as PM of Britain: the English equivalent of Trump in many ways, showing how terrible Right wing politics has become around much of the world. And they have a uniquely bad example of Left wing politics in that country too. That country, if not the whole globe, seems to be suffering some kind of bad alignment of the stars at the moment. When will it pass?
3 comments:
Boris would make an excellent PM and is way smarter than you
Passing over the irrelevant slight, seems to me that Johnson has a long, long history of bad ethical behaviour in various private and professional aspects of his life, and (this is a preliminary view, subject to possible revision) appears to me to be something like a Tony Abbott figure, without the community service aspects but with more success in populism: politically opportunistic and shows flexibility in policy positions that is more to do with personal gain than any good sense of judgement.
BTW: while I think flexibility in policy is a good thing in politics, I want it to be based on evidence and good judgement; not just on "what will get me the PM job".
You have never explained why you think (as I think you do - tell me if I am wrong) why Brexit will be a good thing. Most of the criticism of the EU arose from populist beat ups in the tabloid press; I think every economic analysis since the process began predicts worse economic outcome under any form of Brexit.
Seems to me quasi transitioning libertarians like you just say "less regulation = good" and that was enough to support the idea.
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