Breakfast Club - Blog
US Unemployment nears 10%. Uh oh.
3 July 2009
In the world of finance, expectations are everything.
You can have a really bad economic statistic come out, but if the markets were expecting an even worse figure, then you’ll probably see smiley faces on the floors of stockmarkets around the world.
But if the figure is worse than expected, Oh Boy. Like the latest unemployment stats out of the U.S. Nine-point-five percent of the workforce is now officially unemployed. That was worse than expected, and following on from the logic at the top of this blog, the markets in the U.S. dropped a big way.
In one of those bizarre coincidences, the unemployment rate in the Eurozone also came out, and it too showed a worse-than-expected figure (that was almost exactly the same as the U.S). The Euro markets didn’t take this news too well either.
Which means that the rest of world, geographically shoehorned between these two great economic blocs, is in a physical and economic position to be squeezed when their markets open today.
Which goes to suggest that if we were all Lippy the Lions (the cartoon character from the 1960s who constantly lamented: “I just know we’re going to get into trouble..”) and predicted that every economic figure would be a diaster, then we would, ironically, find ourselves being constantly surprised, with the markets reacting well to every statistic.
So in that strange way of economic forecasting, the more optimistic we are, the more we will be disappointed, and the worse the market will be.
Deepak Chopra would not be amused.
– Phil
Climate Change. Not everyone’s convinced
2 July 2009
Science should be an exact science, but it’s not.
Just when many thought that there really wasn’t much doubt that humans were warming the planet, we start to hear a small but loud group of climate change deniers blogging how the whole thing is a greenie-leftie-pinko-commie conspiracy.
Scanning the web this morning I even found a site that suggested my employer, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation was part of the conspiracy to blind the world to the truth that climate change is a hoax. Funny claim to make. Never, in my days at the ABC have I ever been told what complexion to put on ANY story, let alone the climate one. In fact, I have been asked by one boss to tell her immediately if ever I have been pressured by anyone to slant a story.
Nevertheless, climate sceptics are around. They’re in the minority, perhaps a vast minority, but they are here. Among them is one of the most important people in this whole debate here in Australia, independent Senator Steve Fielding. In the scheme of things, Senator Fielding should not be that important. After all, he holds just one vote in the senate. But that one vote is proving to be the vote that decides whether the government’s emissions policy gets passed through parliament. The government is, unsurprisingly, voting for its climate change package. The Opposition is not sure, so it’s been wanting to defer it until after the Copenhagen meeting on climate change at the end of the year. The Greens, who have a swag of senators, say the government’s package does not go far enough. That leaves Steve Fielding. If he had agreed to the package, it could well have been passed last month.
Senator Fielding does not believe that humans are causing climate change. In fact he doesn’t believe that temperatures have been warming at all in the last 6 years.
Where did the senator did this information? From a group of climate change sceptics. They are scientists who believe that the majority of their brethren are wrong.
I for one would love to believe that we don’t affect climate change. I would love to think that all that stuff we pump into the atmosphere simply disappears or falls to earth to nourish trees and feed ocean fish.
There is solid evidence however that ice caps are melting and that climactic flurries are happening in way that they have not since the last change of Age. For a politician to grab one piece of evidence, against these facts doesn’t really take us anywhere. People are entitled to question the science, and Senator Fielding is right to do so, but to stop what would be at its most a pretty minor government emissions trading package is not helping anything.
The government package would mean that we would have to pay for the emissions we produce. When I get on a plane, it is still voluntary to buy a carbon offset for the flight (a measley $1.50 for a flight from Melbourne to Sydney), These things should have been compulsory years ago.
Senator Fielding (who we’re speaking to on the program later today) is concerned about job losses that might come from the emissions trading law. Yes, but they would be offset by the jobs that would be created in the renewable energy sector.
Final point: Whether climate change is real or not, any package that helps get bad stuff out of the atmosphere can’t be bad, can it?
– Phil
Plane safety standards. There aren’t many.
1 July 2009
Not worldwide anyway.
Yesterday on our program here on Radio Australia we brought you the first news of the crash of that Air Yemenia Airbus off the coast of the Comoros Islands near Madagascar. This morning there is just one survivor of the crash, a fourteen year old girl. More than one hundred and fifty people died in the accident, which happened as the Air Yemenia plane was coming in for a landing.
Already we hear that Dominique Bussereau, the French Transport Minister, has revealed that the plane had been kept out of his country’s airspace because “numerous faults had been noted”, had failed safety inspections, and had been banned from European airports two years ago. The French Government is apparently furious that dozens of its citizens were allowed to board a plane with such a poor safety record, a fury no doubt heightened by the fact that they boarded that plane in Paris.
France is already in grieving over the crash of a plane some weeks ago in the South Atlantic. The black box flight recorder still has not been recovered from that crash site. That the planes involved in both accidents are French Airbusses, does nothing to ease the pain. This incident also brings questions about aviation information dissemination, the safety of older Airbus planes, and safety standards in general.
Today we spoke to experienced U.S. pilot and commentator DJ Frost, who explained that air safety standards are not uniform across the world, and that pilot training is not uniform. Airlines are governed by their country of origin. Sure, Airbus planes come from France, and Boeing from the U.S., but once they are sold to an airline in another country, their maintenance and operation become the responsibility of that country.
DJ Frost says that this is a real problem, especially if that country is not experienced in aviation.
But what of the safety nets? Surely international safety standards are there to make sure that the country does its due diligence and practises its duty of care towards its passengers.
Sorry, no. While there are some safety standards (like that “in the event of an accident” pre-flight safety instruction to passengers), the level of training of pilots, and the schedule for maintenance are left to each country. Planes can be old, planes can be ill-maintained (which no-one would know about), and even planes can, as this latest Air Yemenia crash proves, be allowed to fly into and out of airports where they had been banned.
It is time for a world body to take action. The U.N. may have no right or responsibility for domestic flights within a member nation, but when a plane flies internationally, that airline must be made to conform to a standard. That couldn’t be too hard an ask.
– Phil
Michael Jackson. No resting in peace here.
30 June 2009
This morning some newspapers in Australia simply couldn’t make up their minds.
You see, someone had leaked the details of Michael Jackson’s autopsy, and this left the papers in a dilemma. It had all the tribute stories ready to go, with quotes from Jackson’s former producers, candle-bearing fans, co-musicians and family. But how do you reconcile something as salacious as an autopsy report with the feel-goodness of a memorial service? Or with Jackson’s former wife Debbie Rowe’s revelation that Jackson wasn’t the biological father of their children?
Answer: You don’t. You don’t even bother trying to reconcile the two. You just stick them in together. The Herald Sun here in Melbourne even jammed together on the front page Janet Jackson’s tribute to her brother, with Debbie Rowe’s claims. And boy, these juxtaposed headlines made for very strange bedfellows.
Stranger bedfellows, you might think are Debbie Rowe herself and Jackson. Why would this woman come out and tell the world that Jackson was not the father of their kids? The children would be in grieving, along with family and fans. A pretty tough time to let them know that their father is not their father. Even if they already knew about it, the embarrassment of a disclosure when the world’s media was focussing on the death of the man they had known as their father would be overwhelming for them. Parentage is a private matter, and should’ve stayed that way.
Being famous is no excuse for every single right to decency to be forgotten. Michael Jackson was a man who gave joy to millions. He may have lived a totally weird life, but it was his life to live.
How sad that his death has become an intrusive circus.
– Phil
Australian politics: so some people are paying attention
29 June 2009
I was starting to despair. I interviewed a number of young Australians for our weekend TV program Insiders (see: http://abc.net.au/insiders/) about the OzCar affair and was quite surprised to see that they weren’t all that concerned about the fake emails or the leaking of information that’s been going on. They just thought that this was politics, and they felt that both sides of politicis were behaving badly.
I say I started feeling despair because this case brought up serious questions about the way our politicians behave in the isolated national capital. We political watchers have suspected that these things happen, but when they are brought to light, and proved, we need to react to ensure they don’t happen again. The young people I spoke to seemed to shrug it off, and that, for me, is the worry.
This morning though came the news that maybe people in general are less fatalistic. Three opinion polls today indicate that voters are not impressed with Malcolm Turnbull’s behaviour over this incident. Put briefly, he has taken a huge fall in popularity, one of the polls finding the biggest single fall for an Opposition leader (11%) since it started taking opinions 26 years ago.
The polls put the Opposition in a very unhappy position. Sure, there is still maybe 18 months until the next election, but leader Malcolm Turnbull has taken a big credibility hit. He ran with an allegation without checking his sources, and made a mistake. Normally I would expect Turnbull to tough this one out, but he is the leader of a party that has never persevered with unpopular leaders. There have been rumblings from within his party room, and a number of his MPs voted with the government on Friday over an immigration bill. Turnbull is not holding his party together, and he really does need to have his party with him if he is going to keep going. One poll even had the one credible alternative, Joe Hockey, being preferred as Opposition leader.
Malcolm Turnbull may have gone into this weekend by privately going whoops, I made a mistake. Perhaps his mistake on this Monday morning is not admitting his mistake publicly and letting that side of the story be put to bed. Instead, like an over-tired child, the story is screaming for attention, and the attention is not the kind that the Opposition leader needs. Tomorrow another poll should confirm that Turnbull’s standing has seriously fallen. If that doesn’t convince the Opposition to put the story to bed, with or without Turnbull, then they’re just not paying attention. They should know that Australia is.
– Phil
