photo credit: Genista Tohm Curtis Sorry a little long this week, but it’s complicated. An amusing thing happened in today’s lecture, my lecturer apologised. Not to me, but to the student that emailed him in the previous week asking ‘How many decimal places do we need to calculate to?’ By the lecturer’s account he responded ‘We don’t really care, the … Read More
One Handed Housing Supply
photo credit: Ian Sane On the one hand, the market delivers the best for the least cost. But on the other hand…. few are willing to call it as it is. Yesterday’s National Housing Supply Report used coded language to hint at a ‘possible over-supply of housing’ due to housing investor tax breaks (p50). However the usual suspects were missing … Read More
Week #3: ‘Ceterus Parabus’
Tohm Curtis As per week #1, the assumptions are what make Economics the ‘School of Thumbs’. This week though in a Finance subject we looked at the ‘supply and demand’ model of interest rates. It was a curious exercise in skepticism vs. standardisation. Basically it said, that Money Supply and Money Demand are inversely related to interest rates. The higher … Read More
Land Policy Failure Breeding Nationalism
photo credit: Maria Gertsovskaya From South Africa to Bolivia to here in Australia, the failure to approach land as a human right rather than a speculative kite is breeding dangerous undercurrents amongst those excluded from ‘the property game’. The young firebrand South African ANC youth leader Julius Malema again fired up the masses with these comments: “You need land to … Read More
Week #2: Can I have some Context?
It’s week 2 and already I know I like my Finance subjects better than my Economics subjects. The key difference is: Context. I have a sneaking suspicion that Economists have made Economics far harder to teach (and understand) than it needs to be. For example ‘Marginal Propensity to x’ where ‘x’ can be ‘consume’ ‘save’ ‘tax’ etc. Surely there is … Read More