Lessons on inflation
If sales of obscure, out-of-print book titles are any indication, financial gurus seems increasingly troubled by the prospect of significant inflation in the US and Europe. With interest rates at zero or near-zero per cent, American and European central bankers have pumped out tremendous amounts of money to prop up their economies. Under ordinary circumstances, it would be a recipe for massive price instability. Hence some bankers have been keen to read first-hand accounts of what the world looks like in an era of hyperinflation. As Ambrose Evans-Prichard of Britain’s Daily Telegraph explains, they’re opening up the history books to learn lessons from pre-WWII Germany.
Here’s the plot: an unmarried, foreign-born, atheist woman whose partner is a male hairdresser wants to lead a major nation famous for manly men. Her opponent is the “Mad Monk” — a Speedo-loving amateur boxer who once studied to be a priest. The latest Fox sitcom? Nope, it’s the script for next month’s Australian election.
William Pesek, Bloomberg News
It’s good to see the rest of the world is enjoying our election, even if it’s boring-as-batshit for those of us living through it. I find it disturbing that the first week of the campaign was so devoid of substance that I was unable to find any scope for meaningful analysis. (And the remaining four weeks don’t offer much hope either.) The sense that this is ‘an election about nothing’ is, frankly, infuriating.
An independent umpire?
Has Treasury Secretary Ken Henry’s reputation been shot? That’s the conclusion of Oliver Marc Hartwich, writing for Business Spectator. Formerly of a British think tank, Policy Exchange, Hartwich reckons the next Australian government should import a recently-adopted idea from the UK — an independent budgetary arbiter (what is known in Britain as the Office of Budget Responsibility). The strength of such an independent agency would be to provide credibility to fiscal forecasts, free from accusations of political manipulation.
The inherent problem behind such a suggestion though is that economic forecasting is not an exact science. It all depends on the assumptions you use, and the data you have to hand. When the facts change, so do the numbers. Just ask a meteorologist.
For me this is just another illustration of the futility of drug prohibition … and if criminalising drugs hasn’t worked, what you need to do is treat drugs as a health and social phenomenon
Alex Wodak, drug and alcohol specialist at St Vincent’s Hospital
Laws against the use of ‘illicit’ drugs clearly leave a lot to be desired. To the extent that they are intended to stop people from inflicting harm upon themselves, they fail — plenty of people continue to take drugs. From uni students smoking pot to high-flying sports stars snorting cocaine, prohibition does not mean that people don’t touch drugs. What it does mean is that the problem is buried, and that any underlying problems that exist are left unresolved. And now there’s another dimension to the problem: the failure of legislators to keep up with changing trends. Hence the appearance of so-called ‘legal highs’, which can be purchased by school kids online. Strictly speaking, not all the substances captured by this term are legal in Australia, but customs officials are struggling to keep up with the inflow of goods being ordered. Just one more piece of evidence that victory can never be achieved in the costly ‘war on drugs’.
A font of knowledge
Like most people, I suspect you probably don’t care about fonts. I do. I love finding new fonts with unique and interesting designs. I find the selection of an appropriate font an integral part of any design process. As James Cameron, director of 3D blockbuster Avatar, discovered, choosing the wrong font can leave you open to scorn and ridicule. (The movie used ‘Papyrus’ for its promotional material and subtitles.) While I don’t consider myself a ‘font snob’, I do draw the line at Comic Sans. Unless you’re deliberately being ironic, it’s a font you should never, ever use.
