Regardless of the next Federal Reserve interest rate recommendation at least one bank, and I won’t mention which one, will INCREASE interest rates between 4 and 6 basis points. Why? Each basis point equates to about $100m in additional revenue and the grain store is empty and the analysts are grumpy. This is direct from the horse’s mouth heard with my own ears.

If anyone was following the markets yesterday they may have noticed that the ASX 200 fell 1.85% — not surprising given that the markets feel a similar magnitude. However what is surprising is that STW which is the ASX stock which tracks the ASX 200 rose 0.72%, finishing at a price of 35.10. Perhaps STW should be known as the latent ASX 200 tracker … does anyone smell what I smell here?

Trading Post (Sydney) job losses yesterday Monday 30th March.

While everyone in the world seems to be carving off companies at the knees, it looks as though the GFC is helping some public servants get rich. Centrelink staff have been told their new EB gives them a 10 per cent pay increase over two years (with no link to performance) plus extra annual leave days. A recession’s a good time to be in welfare!

Interesting to see a list of websites that fail to contain any mention of the Bushfire Royal Commission or a link to the RC website. The CFA website doesn’t and nor do the sites of most shire councils. Could it be that some groups don’t want to come under too much fire (no pun intended) from residents of bushfire prone areas?

Conflict of interests anyone? I understand that there were four full pages of red meat advertising in The Sunday Age “M” supplement on March 29th 2009 and a full page red meat advertisement in the main section (pg 11). This is the same day that the article, “Why are these vegans sent to plague us?” by Michael Coulter appeared in The Sunday Age. In light of the strong red meat advertising presence, and the article which was both degrading and scornful of vegans, I see The Sunday Age has a serious conflict of interest issue. The Media Alliance Code of Ethics, point 4 states “4. Do not allow personal interest, or any belief, commitment, payment, gift or benefit, to undermine your accuracy, fairness or independence.” I assume those red meat ads in the very same edition were paid for. Clearly that earned them some free biased comment as well.

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