Radio Australia Today Editorial
Archive for May, 2009
New Zealand couple takes the money and runs.
22 May 2009
What would you do?
The news services around the world are relishing in the story of a Kiwi couiple who were mistakenly given 10 million NZ dollars by a bank after asking for only $10,000. The couple, obviously taking the initiative after such a generous mistake, skipped the country with a majority of the money.
Debates are raging about whether they are in the right to keep the money. There is no shortage of people this morning saying that the money was given to them, and so therefore it is theirs. (These same people would be crying unfair when their mortgages are put up to cover the loss of course).
Of course the couple was wrong to keep it. It was a mistake. It’s the same as if I accidentally handed a hundred dollar note to my boss along with my sick leave form. It would not be his money, and it is not the New Zealand couple’s money, but somewhere deep inside all of us (well maybe not the bankers involved) is a wish that they could get away with it. These former petrol station owners are believed, at this stage, to be in Korea or China, sitting on more than a lifetime’s worth of dosh.
It’s not all easy for them. Interpol has been called in. I don’t know how this most genteel of law enforcement agencies is approaching the case. I’d imagine the Pol would know pretty quickly which country the couple flew to, but once the fugitives got out of the airport, their whereabouts would be much harder to trace. They could buy a cheap car and go anywhere, especially with the Asian rules of car ownership as they stand in some countries (ie: no rules).
So if you are in Asia and you see a couple with a slightly funny accent spending money like it’s fourteen Christmases, then you might wish to tell the authorities.
Then again maybe you won’t, and go home cheered by the fact that sometimes a couple of down-and-outers can beat the system.
– Phil
Germaine Greer. A free thinker.
21 May 2009
And boy we love free thinkers. Well I do anyway.
I remember when Germaine Greer first became prominent after the release of her feminist book “The Female Eunuch” back in the early 1970s. I was only a small child, but I remember my mother bemoaning feminism, Greer, and all this rather loud opinion-giving.
Now, my mother was a strongly independent woman, but it seemed to be the case that it was fine to be strongly independent, so long as you did it quietly. A person who made the case for strong independence and did it strongly, was an embarrassment. I still don’t get it. Sure, what Greer said in Eunuch was pretty strong about mens’ attitudes to women, and womens’ poor attitude to themselves. Looking back now, it was nothing more than a much needed whack on the side of the head, and was just one woman’s opinion anyway.
Germaine Greer has stayed in the media over the years, occasionally whacking us on the head with yet more opinions, an assault that keeps a lot of us from slumbering into a self-assured snooze.
I don’t mind the ocassional beating. She’s often very funny and all her insights are worth thinking about. We’ll be chatting with Germaine Greer a bit later in the morning. It’ll be a revisit of childhood for me, a mental challenge and I hope another one of those wake-up calls for which she is so well known.
Can’t wait.
– Phil
World Economic Crisis. Greed, greed and more greed.
20 May 2009
Yesterday the head of Australia’s Reserve Bank was feeling in a pretty chuffy mood. He was so chuffy as to predict that the end of the current economic crisis was not only in sight but within reach. He claimed the worst will be over (here in Australia at least) by the end of this year, and he’s made predictions for the return of economic growth in the next financial year.
If this is true, then the financial crisis would be one of the most fleeting of all time. These events tend to like staying around for three or four years. Of course a return to growth is not the end of the matter. The Nikkei in Japan will take quite a few years to return to its previous high of 30-plus thousand points (it’s currently at just over 9000). And the homeowners who have lost their properties and jobs, well, it will be many years before they are back on any kind of financial footing.
It is with these vulnerable home-buyers where this whole mess began. Not to blame them though. It was the banks that lent them the money that really caused the problems.
Or at least that’s the view of Gillian Tett, the British Business Journalist of the Year last year. She worked with the Financial Times in London right through the genesis of the current financial turmoil, and was in a prime position to see the world’s markets and economies unravelling.
Tett says that a group of financial people, who should’ve known better, got together in 2004 and worked out a system of default credit swaps. This was the concept that led to an exponential rise in the amount of sub-prime lending carried out by US banks. Sub-prime borrowers are basically people who are least likely to be able to repay their loans. Not that the banks that lent them the money were too worried. Tett says the banks were able to borrow this money from other businesses across the world, allowing them to make a quick buck from this flow-on transaction.
In other words, making money at the risk of the most vulnerable people in the market.
In other words, greed.
Gillian Tett’s book is Fool’s Gold. It’s an enlightening read.
– Phil
Hubert Van Es. A photographer in our lives.
19 May 2009
Photographers have a special place in our minds.
Remember the classic photos of the war in Vietnam: the naked, napalm-burnt girl running towards you; the moment-of-death photo of a Viet Cong agent being summarily executed by a South Vietnamese general.
These are the photos that mobilised American public opinion, and hastened the end of a far too extended war.
But do you remember the names of the photo-journalists who took them? Perhaps, but probably not. These were photographers who had the journalistic ability to be in the right place at the right time; the bravery to be in these most dangerous of places; the judgement to be ready to photograph these momentary events, and the skill to get a good photo out of it.
Yet we still don’t know who they are. For most of us their photographs are their names.
One of our listeners, Gordon Keller has been photographing world events for many years. In the time that we have been in contact, Gordo has been shot while on assignment in Afghanistan, and since that time he has been to other hotspots.
It was Gordo who told us yesterday about the sudden death of Hu (Hubert) Van Es, the Dutch photojournalist who took the iconic shot of people scaling a ladder to a CIA helicopter during the evacuation from Saigon in April 1975. Van Es, showing all of those talents described above, stationed himself on the balcony of an adjacent building, used a long lens, and got the photo of the day. It was an image that went into pop culture again recently by being featured in the musical Miss Saigon.
Hu Van Es covered many stories in the years since Vietnam, including the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, an event that has continued to cause ructions ever since. Gordo reliably tells us that Van Es was a lovely man, and a mentor to others.
But it is for one photo that he will be a part of all of us. That alone is a pretty good legacy.
– Phil
Taiwan and China, best of buddies.
18 May 2009
They have been mortal enemies for sixty years, but what a difference a single politician makes.
Taiwan’s President Ma Ying-jeou is that politician. Since coming to power a year ago this week , Ma has been actively pursuing detente with mainland China. And mainland China has appreciated the overtures. Almost as soon as president Ma took over, China and Taiwan announced direct flights between their two countries. The frosty diplomatic relations thawed, and tourism between the two countries has warmed.
Just this morning we got word that China will be pushing its buinesses to invest in Taiwan. The reason? Purely altruistic (according to the mainland government). China claims that it wants to help Taiwan weather the economic downturn by investing in its infrastructure and other key projects.
No doubt there will be some cynicism about the move, with some in Taiwan sure to say that this is amalgamation by another name. Certainly some in Taiwan are unhappy with the closeness of these two idealogically-opposed neighbours. Yesterday hundreds of thousands of Taiwan citizens marched in the streets of Taipei City and Kaohsiung City denouncing President Ma. The Taiwan News reports that green laser lights flashed the characters for “incompetent” on the presidential building as four columns of protestors led by Democratic Progressive Party Chairman Tsai Ing-wen marched on the office of the president.
This was the first major rally against President Ma, an extremely popular president who won office with 58% of the vote.
Our Taiwan correspondent, natalie Tso has been telling us that Ma’s actions has ebbed the fear of an aggressive China taking over their small country, and that can’t be a bad thing.
But the warming relations still brings in the question: could this be a Chinese takeover by stealth? Certainly the protestors think so.
– Phil
