Aaron – it’s making the whore the criminal and letting the John go free.
Open Thread – Weekend 8 July 2023
- Open Thread – Mon 13 May 2024
- Australia ain’t what it was
- A Military Realist’s View of the Ukraine War Thread
- Open Thread – Weekend 11 May 2024
- Bumtree #10
My surprise is that Mossad isn’t supporting the Jewish people overseas. I think the leaking of a few personal files…
Not a conservative government but a coalition of non-Labour parties in which various interests have to be balanced. FM Winston…
Yes. The left politicises everything. But the normies are revolting!
No because there are mosques everywhere.
ESSAY
Do Younger or Older Doctors Get Better Results?
A physician’s effectiveness has less to do with age than with how many patients they see and how well they keep up to date on new research
Imagine you’ve been admitted to the hospital and you’re meeting the physician taking care of you for the first time. Who are you hoping walks through that door? Would you rather they be in their 50s with a good amount of gray hair, or in their 30s, just a few years out of residency?
In a study published in 2017, one of us (Dr. Jena) and colleagues set out to shed some light on the role of age when it came to internists who treat patients in hospitals.
These physicians, called hospitalists, provide the majority of care for elderly patients hospitalized in the U.S. with some of the most common acute illnesses, such as serious infections, organ failure and cardiac problems.
In much of medical care, patients choose their doctors based on things like bedside manner, perceived expertise, responsiveness, and attributes that are impossible to deduce. Patients who are hospitalized, however, don’t get a say in which hospitalist will treat them—they’re cared for by whichever doctor happens to be on duty at the time. Those doctors tend to be scheduled to cover the hospital in blocks, perhaps one or two weeks at a time.
Using data from Medicare on patients over age 65 and a database containing doctors’ ages, we identified about 737,000 non-elective hospitalizations managed by about 19,000 different hospitalists from 2011-13. We divided patients into four different groups based on the age of the doctor who treated them: doctors aged less than 40, 40-49, 50-59, and 60 and above.
Older doctors obviously had more years of experience since completing residency, with doctors under 40 having an average of 4.9 post-residency years of experience, increasing to 28.6 years for doctors over 60. Older doctors were also more likely to be male: 61% of doctors under 40 were men, compared to 84% of doctors over 60, reflecting the shift in gender makeup that has occurred in our profession in recent decades.
Some percentage of hospitalized patients will survive or die no matter who their doctor is, but for others, their doctor’s clinical judgment, decision-making, and technical skill could be the difference between life and death.
The next step, therefore, was to compare 30-day mortality rates between the four age different groups. Our statistical model found that as doctors got older, their patients had higher mortality rates. The rate for under-40 doctors was 10.8%, increasing to 11.1% in the 40-49 group, 11.3% in the 50-59 group, and 12.1% in the over-60 group.
To put these numbers in perspective, the results suggested if the over-60 doctors took care of 1,000 patients, 13 patients who died in their care would have survived had they been cared for by the under-40 doctors. We repeated the analysis using 60- and 90-day mortality rates, in case longer term outcomes might have been different, but again, the pattern persisted:
Younger doctors had better outcomes than their more experienced peers.
The inevitable question followed: Why?
There are two possible explanations. The first is that there is a true age effect, wherein simply being older leads to changes in how a doctor practices, resulting in higher mortality. Perhaps older doctors are overly confident in their experience, feeling they have “seen a case like this a million times,” and thus miss tricky diagnoses.
The other, which we think is more likely, is that there are things that older doctors and younger doctors do differently simply because they were trained at different times.
Younger doctors possess clinical knowledge that is more current. If older doctors
haven’t kept up with the latest advances in research and technology, or if they aren’t following the latest guidelines, their care may not be as good as that of their younger peers.
One way that doctors stay up to date is simply by taking care of patients. When patients come to us with a given diagnosis, it may prompt us to check out the latest research, guidelines, or recommendations for that condition. Medications are the internist’s primary tool; since newer and better drugs are developed at a (relatively) rapid pace, seeing a high volume of patients is a good way to keep up.
To see if this might be the case, we repeated the analysis but this time divided doctors based on both age and case volume. We found that for “low volume” doctors, older doctors had higher mortality. For “medium volume” doctors, the pattern was less pronounced. And for “high-volume” doctors, the pattern went away altogether. In practical terms, as long as a doctor is seeing a sufficiently large number of patients, the doctor’s age is irrelevant to the care they give.
Does this mean that, on balance, younger doctors are “better” than older ones? This study suggests that if “better” is defined as a hospitalist having lower 30-day patient mortality, then we would have to say yes.
But what about surgeons, who in addition to their diagnostic skills require technical abilities that depend on experience and muscle memory?
To find out, a separate study by Dr. Jena and colleagues looked at about 900,000 Medicare patients who underwent common non-elective major surgeries (for example, emergency hip fracture repair or gall bladder surgery) performed by about 46,000 surgeons of varying age. We chose non-elective surgery since patients don’t have a whole lot of control over their surgeon when they come in with an urgent or emergent problem. As with hospitalists, they’ll end up assigned to the surgeon on duty in an as-good-as-random fashion. Just as before, patients were divided into four groups based on the age of their surgeon, and we used a statistical model to calculate the 30-day mortality rate following surgery.
The results showed that unlike hospitalists, surgeons got better with age.
Their patient mortality rates had modest but significant declines as they got older: mortality was 6.6% for surgeons under 40, 6.5% for surgeons age 40-49, 6.4% for surgeons age 50-59, and 6.3% for surgeons over age 60.
Clearly something different was happening here. It may be that for hospitalists, the benefit of steadily increasing experience starts to be outweighed by their waning knowledge of the most up-to-date care.
It’s different for surgeons, though, who hone many of their skills in the OR. Surgeons build muscle memory through repetition, working in confined spaces with complex anatomy. They learn to anticipate technical problems before they happen and plan around them based on prior experience. Over time, they build greater technical skills across a wider variety of scenarios, learn how to best avoid complications, and choose better surgical strategies.
What does this mean for all of us as patients when we meet a new doctor? Taking studies of hospitalists and surgeons together, it’s clear that a doctor’s age isn’t something that can be dismissed out of hand—age does matter—but nor can it be considered in isolation. If we’re concerned about the quality of care we’re receiving,
the questions worth asking aren’t “How old are you?” or even “How many years of experience do you have?” but rather “Do you have a lot of experience caring for patients in my situation?” or “What do you do to stay current with the research?”
Drs. Jena and Worsham are researchers at Harvard and practice medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. This essay is adapted from their new book, “Random Acts of Medicine: The Hidden Forces That Sway Doctors, Impact Patients, and Shape Our Health,” published July 11 by Doubleday.
Is the woke agenda really a creation of the leftards? It is certain that it was enabled by them and their perverted thinking. I remember leftards used to be against big business, big pharma etc. But the scamdemic and pfizzer clot shots proved the opposite. It appears wokeism is more a neo-communist intelligentsia infiltration of the ‘traditional’ left power base.
Ms 7% Walton only thought she was Aboriginal after a DNA test. I woulda thought she had more than an inkling after every time Rove came home she burst into “welcome to country”.
Please.
“Twig” and “stub”?
Enough with the insults.
sfw,
that clip was great. Excellent interpretation, and what a setting!
Headline: Injustice: How the Sex Offender Registry Destroys LGBT rights
Sounds a bit like the two groups (apparently essentially two families) that argued for years over which was the true traditional “owners” of Canberra. Part of the dispute was over the spelling of their tribal name, one group used a double “n” spelling, the other a single “n”.
Two groups from people whose ancestors did not have a written language argued for years about the spelling on their name.
AS BB would probably say, FMD.
Australia has no soul and we can’t feel black fella’s pain according to another Uluru from the arse author. She’s a looker so I forgive her.
Entitled aristocracy want their power and privileges.
“So, when will we read a description of a penis as a “stick”, a “rod”, a “beanbole”, a “twig”, or a “stub”?”
Cornichon?
My mother had the same percentage of Viking DNA but that didn’t entitle her to make a land claim in Norway. Frankly, the climate there is atrocious.
Two groups from people whose ancestors did not have a written language argued for years about the spelling on their name.
Easzy Peazy .. double letters! .. pppht! these are folk that can slip apostrophes into verbal language(s) .. even the ‘Gypos heiroglyphics weren’t on that level .. LOL!
The scary thing about the insistence on a truth-telling if The Voice gets up is to remember that the political class spruiking it don’t believe in objective truth.
There are truths – as many as there are people.
And you cannot ascribe greater truth to one or the other because there are different ways of knowing.
Stories my manna told me are equal to research based on contemporaneous documents plus analysis of evidence.
Ultimately one ‘version’ must be settled upon when eventually an course of action is to undertaken – and this is where they flex their dishonesty – they choose the one they want and label everything else is bigotry (although by their own logic even bigotry is a way of knowing).
Razey
Which would explain the growing gap between leftards and the traditional left constituency of rural and industrial workers, and tradies. The intelligensia seem to be generally less capable of independent achievement, so do they have to leech off the works of others?
My mother had the same percentage of Viking DNA but that didn’t entitle her to make a land claim in Norway. Frankly, the climate there is atrocious.
My great gran (mum’s side) was Oz born, I even have a copy of her birth certificate, so gotta be some sort of “Oz luvs ya” reward there .. shirley?
I needz a VOICE .. I tellz ya!
Avoiding service doesn’t exude power.
David Adler on Outsiders making a helluva lot of sense.
And they’re welcome to it!
Just watched on Outsiders, commentator re Netherlands election situation. It crossed my mind that the Dutch will be having a bit of trouble when they are requested to return their land to it’s natural owner, the North Sea. Caused me to wryly smile !
Why do certain types always wash up on the Gold Coast?
[rhetorical quest.]
Her lifestyle before colonisation would have been purely paradise, surely?
These are simply money parked away from the CCP reach. Why did we allow this at all? Why not buy back these properties if the government is going to dictate to owners?
Dear, dear! ,, next you’ll be wanting gummint(s) to buy hospitals! .. where will it all end?
I’m 9%. When do we get the Orkney Islands back, I want to know?
Agree about the climate. All those Scandi places could do with a few more degrees at the upper end of the thermometer.
My profoundly autistic downs syndrome nephew has 27/7 care in a share house with 2 others. There are 4 carers. Recently a new carer came, an old bloke. My nephews demeanour has changed completely. He is now happy, lost a lot of weight and aggression. The old bloke had a downs child of his own so although not “qualified”, for what its worth, knew more about it because of love for his child, not a job. The carers have their own theories as to proper care to the detriment of these poor wee darlings.
Reminds me of Archbishop Comensoli of Melbourne opining during the height of the Pell Affair that he believed both Pell and his accuser.
Thankfully the full bench of the High Court weren’t epistemological post-modernists.
Roger my daughter tells me it’s because they think the roads are paved with gold. All her scumbag friends from school went there. It does seem to attract a certain type.
Climate criminals! How dare they prevent Gaia’s holy inexorably rising sea level from flooding their country! I wonder if Hollandaise-style dikes would work for other coastal countries?
Interestingly the pundits fear the “far-right populist” Dutch farmer party may win the election, which is likely to be held in November. Who knew that farmers whose livelihood and farms are to be stolen by the government might dislike such a thing?
Globalist Dutch Government Collapses, PM Mark Rutte Resigns, as Pro-Farmer Populists Threaten to Upend Establishment in Upcoming Elections (8 Jul)
Government ‘help’ to business is just as disastrous as government persecution… the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off.
– Ayn Rand
This ‘elder’ stuff is irritating. Sounds like an Anglo-Saxon word to me too. Apparently we can have lady elders too which seems odd for a patriarchy. Seems contrived and built around marxist dogma.
Soon.
Orkney chiefs hits out at ‘dreadful’ SNP failings and outline bid to leave Scotland (3 Jul)
If they did declare independence much of the North Sea oil and gas reserves would be theirs by right of the 200 nautical mile economic zone. Do I hear the sound of exploding lefty heads in SNP HQ?
Modern made-up rubbish. Only initiated men could be tribal elders.
Good luck advocating for the Voice in regional Western Australia…
I still don’t understand the attraction of Karl Marx- seems like a truly evil man who never did an honest day’s work in his life. Did the Fabians come from him as well?
What is Noongah word for elder?
Ms 7% Walton only thought she was Aboriginal after a DNA test.
No.
7% was unidentifiable.
This is because some racial groups haven’t been profiled.
Aborigines are one group, but there are a few others.
Why that is, I don’t know.
Old pizzwreck.
miltonf
Jul 9, 2023 11:15 AM
Agree about K Marx, a thoroughly useless individual he would have been never heard of let alone remembered, but for his sponsor Engels, whom the communists seldom mention these days, as he was an evil capitalist exploiter of workers etc.
The Fabians date back a few millennia before him, that’s the only excuse I have for them.
I particularly detest the possessive “our pain” coming from a well paid and tenured university lecturer who likewise has no idea of “our pain” in the mortgage belt.
Picking the scabs off the “pet” abbos in the remote communities, plastering them on their own remarkably pale skin and crying their deprived from their 6 figure income uni positions is all so authentic now.
If the only way you can claim deprivation is as a collective, you arent deprived.
ok so the Fabians are a different thread- I thought it was more early 20th century.
I think the expansion of tertiary ejuchashun over the last 60 years has been worse than a disgusting waste of other people’s money.
great beer hall party music.
I’m not sure if this can save “Gangnum Style”, but it gets close
No.
7% was unidentifiable.
This is because some racial groups haven’t been profiled.
Aborigines are one group, but there are a few others.
Yes that is right Ed, hence why Walton undertook the DNA test. So she could have less than 7% Aboriginality which is very likely.
Then the question is how much percentage of Aboriginal bloodline is enough to qualify you as such?
It’s bizarre and really an affront to those who have things like mortgages and houses to take care of.
GreyRanga
Jul 9, 2023 10:35 AM
The autistic group houses are a concept I have thought could have a lot of potential, possibly ranked by the level of autism and behaviours being housed.
Unfortunately they could also be badly done, so much would depend on the calibre of carers /staff involved.
If you dont mind me asking is this home state/ private or a combo?
And if its part of a group what the name of the organisation is running it.
Cheers.
Albo in the Swinging Pig. Perfect match.
I also note it’s the same old Wallabies on show against the Springboks, even with the return of Eddie Jones. 43-12 is a nice reaming.
The Voice will fix this, sure as eggs. A thumbnail appraisal of the remote schools program, initiated by Abbott in 2013, courtesy of AAP this morning:
REMOTE SCHOOLS ATTENDANCE STRATEGY
* Cost $206.4 million over eight years
* The RSAS operates through community-based providers which employ local people to support the program’s activities
* Has employed up to 500 people
* Schools that participated have had attendance rates drop an average eight per cent
* Some 84 schools in remote communities participated in total.
The millions were spent putting ‘respected elders’ in yellow vests and sending them communities to muster the kids into school. The result: Eight per cent more empty desks.
But don’t worry, the moment we get a Voice, indigene parents will become instantly responsible, cook the porridge, get their kids up, properly dressed and off to school.
And no doubt they will supervise homework in the evening. Yes, the Voice will do all this (in a pig’s eye)
miltonf
Jul 9, 2023 11:30 AM
Their ‘gravatar’ so to speak was a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Their motto, time is on our side, bide your time etc. and they were and are right, slowly, and easy does it.
Look at the education sector today.
Remember the saying; give me a child of seven and I give you the man?
Yes, I recall a lot of creeps from the Hawke era where Fabians. Blewitt?
Hang on, what happened to the aunties who call for dry camps and supported the Intervention and feature in individuals’ redemption stories and a whole lot more positive acts over the decades? They might now be being called elders by journalists, but lets face it they have backbones that mean things are not as bad as they could have been.
Bad as we see things in the street, 60% of Aboriginal families are minding their own business and not letting their kids go to the pack.
Quite right, far worse it is an immoral waste of many young people’s most effective life years, for little benefit.
I’m about 9% nicotine. Lodging a land claim on the WD & HO Wills factory.
Well I’ve never heard of Bess Price or her daughter calling themselves or being called ‘aunties’. Maybe I’m mistaken.
DNA testing is an unreliable way to determine Aboriginality.
The problem is that anyone with unidentifiable DNA will be able to claim Australian Citizenship on that basis.
That may be tens of millions of people.
The only fraud proof way is Birth Certificates and Colonial Records.
Some people will miss out because records have been destroyed.
Regarding percentages, a person with 6% Aboriginality will have a G/G/Grandparent with 100% Aboriginality. That person would’ve had 2 parents with 100% Aboriginality and that line went back 80 Generations.
So, I don’t think being 6% Aboriginal disqualifies a person from claiming Aboriginality.
Have you checked your new residence for waterproofing?
Quite right, far worse it is an immoral waste of many young people’s most effective life years, for little benefit.
yes often a trade is so much better
Yes, I recall a lot of creeps from the Hawke era where Fabians. Blewitt?
Plenty of Liberal Party Ministers are Fabians.
Philip Ruddock was one, some say John Howard.
Rafe Champion said he used to be a Fabian.
That’s now “give me a boy of seven and I’ll give you a woman”.
OTOH the autophagy between the TERFs, the LGB lobby and the trannies is getting more popcornworthy. Who will win this leftist pissing match?
Trans children’s charity Mermaids fails to have charitable status stripped from LGB Alliance (Grauniad, 6 Jul)
From Ace Of Spades comes this rip snorter:
Teela Reid is a very successful urban professional fully intergrated Australian, she cannot speak for Aboriginal people experiencing disadvantage in remote Australia.
She does not know them.
What is Noongah word for elder?
The nyoongah word for elder is “nyoongah”. Literally means “man”.
One high profile activist in Victoria claims Aboriginal status on the basis of an Aboriginal great great grandfather – apparently, it’s a myth that Aborigines are dark skinned, some can be quite fair skinned.
Careful about the Viking DNA.
It may not have been willingly acquired.
Thanks for that one – you learn something new, every day!
Charlemagnism, Arianist, Frankish tripe. Blatant propaganda!
So who is going to be charged over pink batts , or is that old news.
good on the lady, she’s obviously worked hard and done very well, but I’m not sure I understand this somewhat confused article. Maybe rant is a more appropriate term.
I,m in the wrong business..Taylor Swift will gross $45mill. US for everyone of her 106 concerts. Thats $45 mill. in tickets and merchandise . The Aussie tickets sold out in minutes. Recession my arse….
There were just a few keen sex tourists on those dragon ships.
If we’re going to indict over RoboDebt, we’re going to indict over most military procurement; “No child shall be living in poverty”, “interest rates won’t rise”, “We’ll just change everything when we get in anyway” and a 200 billion dollar suburban railway loop.
Fine. Put all the major party politicians in gaol, I’ll never vote for them again, why do I care?
The Taylor Swift concert tour is expecting to gross $1bill in ticket sales and $4bill in merchandise sales…FMD.
I dunno, but in Aranda it is tchilpe pronounced chilpee meaning old man – usually given to grey haired types.
In my aboriginal family, elder women are all auntie or mum so auntie in general, or mum Helen directly. I cant remember the aboriginal word for woman apart from lubra or gin or their spellings.
Aboriginal Matriachy is a modern invention, made possible by the hated colonialists.
Aboriginal women past child bearing age were on notice that their services were no longer required.
Question re DNA.
On my mums side, Scot, northern English and Irish
On my Dads side Irish and German, about 50:50.
Ancestry DNA show Irish and Welsh??? and French (assume Gaelic here) not so much Scot or Northern England, but NADA – Nothing of the German.
Patrilineal v Matrilineal DNA? How do you get both, does my brother have one not the other?
Please explain?
I remember being told by a class mate of one of my daughters she didn’t need to work hard for VCE as she was 1/16th aboriginal and was guaranteed a place in the Melbourne University Law School as long as she got a score of 79.
Affirmative action works well for middle class suburbanites.
Key word is gross! Take out multiple mill eachfor stadium hires, agents fees, promoter fees, CoGS(for the merch), the transport of the set, people to erect said set, dancers, real musicians, security, GST on tickets and merch, commission for Ticketek, income tax etc etc etc. I doubt she trousers much more than a few million herself.
There are women’s secret places where men were not allowed, so there must have been some kind of teaching, learning.
The solicitors-general of Australia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solicitor-General_of_Australia
Three in particular.
Stephen Gageler SC 2008–2012
Justin Gleeson SC 2013–2016
Stephen Donaghue KC 2017–present
When you do a name search of the Robodebt Royal Commission report, the results may surprise you.
Thanks Wally. Well, dur.
I reckon Noongah/Nyoongah should be spelt Gnoongah to get that Gnamma hole, Gnowangerup, Gnopitchup sound.
Self dur, that is.
I don’t doubt you Helen but overall they were patriarchal groups that couldn’t carry the old and sick.
I think life as a woman in Aboriginal society would have been about as bad as anyone could imagine.
It’s the glossing over of the many negatives that gets me.
I think you’ve told us a couple of very illustrative stories a couple of years ago.
Diogenes
Jul 9, 2023 12:35 PM….If Taylor Swift gets to keep 5% of that its $250mill in her pocket…not bad money .
This is actually mind-blowing.
Upper Echelon, 9 July 2023.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b85Ptxunlas
A bot network priming a crypto promoter.
The Fake New World of “Citizen Journalism”
I always found it odd how he’d have 10,000+ people tuning into his space but couldn’t get anywhere near that sort of engagement on a regular tweet.
Elon needs to destroy this guy.
For shame, don’t you know “Truth-telling” when you see it?
From the Royal Commission Report –
The Robodebt Scheme
The Australian system of government includes a number of checks and balances, protections against abuses of power, and mechanisms for external oversight and scrutiny. Ministers bear responsibility for their portfolios; secretaries have duties and responsibilities with respect to the departments they administer; and public servants have standards of conduct to which they must adhere, which include acting with care and diligence, integrity and, importantly, providing the government with advice that is
frank and honest.
How, then, in such a system, did it come to pass that the government implemented, and continued, an unlawful scheme that has been described as a “shameful chapter in the administration of the Commonwealth social security system” and “a massive failure of public administration”?
This part of the report tells the story of Robodebt – from the frenetic, confused machinations of a pressured bureaucracy, to its ignominious end, ultimately brought about by a legal advice which, in essence, made precisely the same point as had been made in the first legal advice provided on the concept of what would become the Robodebt scheme.
The Scheme’s demise, for all of its seeming inevitability, took far longer than it should have, particularly for all of those harmed by a Scheme to which they should never have been subject.
Says it all really.
Each sibling gets 50% from each parent, but the mix is different (unless they are identical twins. An “ethnicity” can drop out completely of the mix for one but appear in another’s mix.
Nothing more stark than seeing mixed race parents produce one white and one black fraternal twins.
especially when one is a ranga
another paid of twins.
Robodebt.
The problem is in the second syllable – “debt”.
It took some blanket earnings figures over a period of time and made some broad brush assumptions, some of which were invalid in individual cases.
The key thing it exposes is that politicians and public servants on regular fortnightly incomes couldn’t grasp the realities of employment in the real world. That is, it was possible for someone to earn $2,000 in a month as a contractor/casual but also be unemployed for two weeks of that month.
My late uncle “went droving” out of Alice Springs in 1947, and spent the rest of his working life droving cattle and managing stations. He described the hierarchy in the Aboriginal camps – the men got first pick of the game that was cooked, the dogs came next, and the women and children got the scraps…oh, and, yes, women who couldn’t keep up when the tribe “moved on” were left behind to die.
Interesting…the mother herself looks to be “mixed race”, so the red headed daughter could in theory have inherited her mother’s European genes but nothing or next to nothing from her African/West Indian background.
Power has only one duty – to secure the social welfare of the People.
– Benjamin Disraeli
P, I am sorry to hear how you had to cope with a very active child who probably had some form of ADD, but as you’ve found out, some of them do grow out of it, with love and care and discipline, and end up doing well in life.
When it is combined with autism though it becomes something else again, and very much harder to manage. Pogria notes how the parents can suffer and are grateful for even the briefest respite, such as I gave yesterday. As a parent it can drain you, and can set parents against each other too, for without help and understanding they have until the recent past just been left alone to cope as best they can. Luckily, even autistic kids have a level of resilience; my eldest son managed well enough living a life of continual meltdowns, so far on the dole, refusing to seek diagnosis due to its ‘stigma’, with two failed relationships and two children to father, while very obviously being someone with, as Dr. Kanner noted long ago a diverse set of presentations with a dominant theme: “an inability to relate themselves in the ordinary way to people”. If he gets work, or enrols in study, he lasts a very short period, two months max, and is throughout that period overcome with his own disorganisation and subject to panics. Like my oldest son, adult people with a degree of autism and a lot of family support and encouragement manage to mask this quite well, while still being dismayed with themselves and their lives. Diagnosis can come as a relief and self-help groups can counter the social isolation and provide hints for self-organisation. This son of mine has agreed to be tested, at last. Privately, cost of $3150, which we will pay. There is a six month waiting list for a Medicare psychologist and no guarantee they will send him for testing, with another year at least to wait for that if he can get it at all. So far no-one at Centrelink, given his years on the dole, has ever suggested there might be a problem. I’ve kept hoping they would, and make him face it. Nope. They are blind.
It’s taken the episodes being lost, broke and bereft of help in Thailand and the getting lost injured at night in dense bushland to make him see reason at last and review a life full of such episodes.
On the now sadly defunct FarRiders site an older rider told a story how he was doing a transconti ride – as they were want to do – and out the back of nowhere stops to take a piss at a truck stop, puts the side stand down and the behemoth topples over. There was nothing for it but to wait till someone pulls into the truck stop. Eventually a double B pulls in and the truckie jumps out, walks straight over to the bike and sets it on its feet again. The FarRider thanks him profusely and the truckie says; don’t worry about, I’ve had to go over to my old man’s place three times to pick up his bike.
Sancho, I’d be the first to say I was instrumental in not handling some things well, and also in noting that a bad first marriage to the wrong person gave two of my children a poor start in life, with my own poor start not helping me be as good as I’d like to be either. Or maybe I’m just selfish, marrying again, that could be part of it too. In fact, I’ve written about it in Quadrant, the needs children have for a stable and loving home with two of their own biological parents.
When you’re in the pressure cooker, as they say, it’s hard to see where the heat is coming from. As parents do our best, and from what he’s written off the OT, Matrix has tried hard with his daughter. We all have personal psychological blemishes and blind spots but transgenderism isn’t Matrix’s fault – I sheet the blame for that elsewhere to the ridiculous ideologies of the left. If you are married into these, as I was, as he was, life can be very hard for the kids trying work out where the hell they fit in between a mum and a dad so politically divergent.
Just read a very helpful article at the Speccie on tradecraft to survive in the era of the Surveillance State.
I lied, it wasn’t helpful, it was complete waffle.
Carrier pigeons! (pic of Liz Windsor in Guides uniform with a carrier pigeon)
Imaginary languages! Like Elvish and Klingon are not available on Google Translate.
Microdots and dead drops! Yeah, we read Spycatcher. In 1981.
Basically the author recognised that we want some ways to fight back but missed all the useful things like FIGHTING BACK.
There is an exceptionally moving reminiscence, a sort of eulogy, in the latest Speccie, written by Catriona Olding, Jeremy Clark’s wife in his later years. She speaks of his last days, but also of their first ones, when discussing their meeting and feelings of togetherness and where to take it from there. He says “Is there a dealbreaker?” and she says it’s “please don’t shout at me” and he says ‘That’s easy”, and she says how will she go as a nobody compared to his other girlfriends, and he says she’s not boring, and on the conversation goes until “Tentatively at first, as both of us were bruised by the past. But soon we began to fall or rather – paraphrasing Low Life (Jeremy’s column) – to double-somersault into love with a half-pike and a twist.”
Yes. That’s how it was for me and Hairy too. Just like that. We fell in love.
And after forty years we still are. In spite of all that came with that.
rosie, agreed, the men dished out the punishment and sent the woman/women to be gang raped by the other mob in lieu of war and women actively helped the men ‘initiate’ (rape and genitally mutilate) the young girls, but even so, there were – as has always been, women’s powers, and secret things. Women had their own dances and singing places and men were not allowed to be there.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Jul 9, 2023 1:12 PM
You must indeed be a strong woman reading about your travails regarding family members and I admire those.
However I can’t see the point of your son taking a test.
What difference will it make to have his problem declared officially as a handicap or illness?
Will it change his behavior, or will he get treatment and is any treatment at his age be beneficial or even effective?
Hi Lizzie
You seem to have had bad luck regarding children with Neurological Issues.
Do you think too many Childhood Immunisdations may have been a factor?
The Robodebt system would have been great for narrowing down candidates for query and audit.
For generating legal letters of demand? Not so much.
This is what happens when you put a few computer geeks in a room with a bunch of public servants trying to avoid the hard graft of follow up and validation.
The concept of automatically churning out reams of “pay up or else” notices would have been very appealing to work-averse public servants.
And whoever developed the scenarios for testing lacked any aptitude for lateral thought. The best people to develop testing scenarios are dole cheats.
Top ‘o de page!
I’d like to thank the Academy, Harvey Weinstein …
Just watching the BBC TV 1980 Series on Oppenheimer. 7 episodes free on Youtube. Fascinating Series.
Will be interesting to compare this to the new Film which is to be released soon.
.
“The best people to develop testing scenarios are dole cheats.”
As the Commissioner stated in the Report, the ‘System’ testers never included the recipients as part of the testing process. A huge failure on the part of the ‘System’ instigators. Not every recipient is a dole cheat BTW.
You know this how, exactly?
What you are saying is that all other influences in a child’s life, even some which would normally be peripheral at worst, had a far greater sway than one parent.
Who knows?
Maybe the daughter wanted to be more of a God-Oracle like dad so decided to have the surgery to be more like dad.
I mean, it’s possible.
My point is this.
If you believe transgenderism is a result of environmental factors, why immediately and categorically rule out the influence of one member of a small household as a factor?
The influences are not always affirming. There could be a reactionary, rebellious element as well.
For the record.
I believe there are two types of transgenderism:-
1. Genuine gender dysphoria; or
2. An attention seeking response to environmental stimuli, either affirmation from peers or as a reactionary, rebellious response to parental authority.
Type 1’s will work extremely hard to blend in as members of their identifying gender. That is, if identifying as a woman, they will definitely not display stubble or chest hair.
You know you’re getting old when the candles cost more than the cake.
– Bob Hope
The Robodebt system would have been great for narrowing down candidates for query and audit.
No, it was rubbish thunk up by Bill Shorten as a time bomb for the incoming Coalition Government.
When that Government eventually found out about it, their response was to cover it up and kick the can down the road.
The ATO was already reporting earnings to Centerlink and the banks were reporting deposits.
All that was necessary was a Program to generate a Text message with the date and time of a phone interview to discuss the matter.
Utterly depraved.
Okay, so the ATO has sped up my return, I will get it shortly (this week). Credit to them for once.
My accountant, who doesn’t realise she’s my accountant (LOL) says that as long as you know your information is accurate, lodge it on July 1.
I’m not sure why they create misinformation for the public “wait for the pre-fills”, it’s just nonsense.
It is all very silly though, if the ATO believes it can do real-time income tax reconciliation in a few years’ time, then barring deductions, you should get your refund automatically once all pre-filling is done – which should really happen at 12:00 AM on July 1. There are also ATO-created deduction apps.
Perth Trader
Jul 9, 2023 12:20 PM
I,m in the wrong business..Taylor Swift will gross $45mill. US for everyone of her 106 concerts. Thats $45 mill. in tickets and merchandise .
The Aussie tickets sold out in minutes. Recession my arse….
‘Not an economy on its knees’: Why more rate pain is on the way
EY Oceania’s chief economist Cherelle Murphy points out that when expensive Taylor Swift tickets sell out in a day, consumers clearly still have money to spend.
Karen Maley – Columnist
This was the week in which the searing anger and resentment caused by soaring mortgage costs erupted out of the suburbs, forcing politicians to acknowledge that their own political survival could be at stake.
It was a week in which Prime Minister Anthony Albanese found himself being grilled by hostile breakfast show hosts over hungry schoolchildren rummaging through their classmates’ bags in search of food.
“I know what it’s like to do it tough,” Albanese said.
But Albanese is an astute enough politician to know that empathy won’t be sufficient to calm the incandescent fury in mortgage land.
That’s why he was undoubtedly relieved this week when the Reserve Bank announced a temporary pause in its rate rise cycle, which has already seen its official cash rate climb by 4 percentage points since May last year.
“The fact that interest rates were paused yesterday at 4.1 [per cent] is a good thing,” Albanese told the Nine Network’s Today program.
And while his government has endeavoured to distance itself from the Reserve Bank’s rate rises, Albanese will be acutely aware that it won’t be able to escape the red-hot anger over rising interest rates forever.
Albanese will have vivid memories of vicious punishment meted out to the Keating government after mortgage rates climbed to a peak of 17 per cent in the early 1990s.
The problem for his government is that the reprieve from rising rates is only likely to be temporary, with global sharemarkets and bond markets selling off sharply at the end of the week on the prospect of more rate rises around the world.
The global shake-up risks putting further downward pressure on Australia’s already low currency, a development that would increase inflation by driving up the cost of imported goods for households and businesses. Reserve Bank policymakers will have little option but to respond with more rate rises to avoid falling too out of step with other central banks.
After Tuesday’s board meeting, Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe cautioned that “some further tightening of monetary policy may be required to ensure that inflation returns to target in a reasonable time frame”.
Cherelle Murphy, chief economist at EY Oceania, says there’s a sense that, even after all the rises, the economy is still running a bit stronger than what the Reserve Bank would like. “And that’s why the Reserve Bank is not done.”
Despite all the rate rises, there are signs the economy remains more buoyant than the Reserve Bank would like.
“We’re starting to see some indications the economy is calming down a little bit,” she says. “The labour market is still very tight, but job ads are not as high. We’re also seeing the consumption numbers slow, but they’re still fairly healthy.”
With Lowe’s seven-year term as governor ending in mid-September, most economists expect that whoever Treasurer Jim Chalmers appoints as the next head of the Reserve Bank will make little difference to the course of future rates.
How many more rate rises should you expect?
“I think we’re pretty close to the end,” says AMP’s chief economist, Shane Oliver.
“The fact that the Reserve Bank has said that higher rates are working to return the economy to a sustainable balance is a positive. They haven’t said that before, so it’s a sign that even they think they’re getting close to the end.”
But, he adds, “the Reserve Bank is still worried about wages and services inflation, so we’ll likely see another couple of rate hikes.”
Oliver warns that the latest monetary tightening cycle – which kicked off in May 2022 – has seen interest rates rise at the fastest clip since 1989-90. What’s more, rising debt levels mean that households are feeling the sting of rising rates much more sharply than in the late 1980s.
“Back then, the household debt-to-income ratio was 63 per cent. That’s about one-third of the current level of 190 per cent,” he notes. “That means a 17 per cent mortgage rate back then is roughly equivalent to a 6 per cent mortgage rate today.” And, he notes, home loan rates are now climbing above the 6 per cent level.
Not surprisingly, many households are buckling under the combination of rising interest rates and heavy debt burdens.
The Reserve Bank has previously estimated that, based on a cash rate of 3.75 per cent, around 15 per cent of people with a variable rate mortgage would be cash flow negative (where their mortgage payments and essential living expenses exceed their disposable income) this year.
“Now that the cash rate is 4.1 per cent, it means that possibly 20 per cent of borrowers are facing a situation where they’re cash flow negative this year,” Oliver says.
“That means they’ll have to dip into savings, or borrow from other people, or sell assets, including their house. The other alternative is to go to the bank and ask them for a period of grace where they only pay interest on their loan.”
Spending slows
Meanwhile, the country’s major banks report that their internal payment data shows that consumers are snapping their wallets shut.
“If I look at the NAB’s data, particularly on the consumption side, it’s very weak,” says National Australia Bank chief economist Alan Oster. “We are seeing stress, particularly at the bottom end. Renters, in particular, because rents have gone up a lot.
“There has been changed behaviour in the mortgage belt – that’s what the Reserve Bank wants. Most of them won’t fall over, but they will downscale their spending, or buy cheaper stuff.”
He says NAB’s internal data indicates this process is already under way. “People are no longer spending on household goods, they’re cutting back what they spend on holidays.”
What’s more, he says, people are beginning to economise on spending at restaurants and cafes. “We’re also seeing quite soft hospitality numbers. Initially, we saw softer retail spending, now people are cutting back on hospitality.”
Oster believes this growing consumer frugality will translate into more sluggish economic growth this year.
“We’re predicting GDP [gross domestic product] to grow at 0.5 per cent this year – the Reserve Bank is expecting 1.5 per cent,” he says. “They’ll almost certainly have to change their figure now.”
But is it possible that after such a long period of ultra-low interest rates, home loan borrowers are exaggerating the pain they feel from rising mortgage rates? “No,” Oster replies firmly.
He points out that it takes about three months for banks to pass on increases in the cash rate to their home loan customers, “so even if the Reserve Bank were to hold steady now, home borrowers still have 75 basis points of rate hikes coming through”.
When Taylor Swift tickets sell out in a day – and those are expensive tickets – that’s not the sign of an economy on its knees.
— Cherelle Murphy, chief economist, EY Oceania
In addition, he says, “huge numbers of home borrowers are now rolling off their fixed rate loans and are seeing their home loan rate jump from below 2 per cent to above 6 per cent. That makes a huge difference – equal to a couple of thousand dollars a month in free cash flow.”
But EY’s Murphy says she’s sceptical of surveys in which consumers claim to be tightening their belts and cutting back spending on non-essential items.
“Certainly, they’re not spending as quickly as they were,” she says, “but there’s not a big slump in consumption. And the problem is when you’ve got strong consumption, you’ve almost inevitably also got some uncomfortably high consumer price inflation continuing.
“You just have to look at our enthusiasm for travel to see the impact on hotel, cafe and airline ticket prices.”
Murphy argues that “spending in the economy, while it is definitely coming off, really it isn’t as bad as it’s generally perceived. That’s not to say that some households are not feeling the pain. There’s definitely a segment of the population that is struggling.”
But, she adds, “when Taylor Swift tickets sell out in a day – and those are expensive tickets – that’s not the sign of an economy on its knees. And we’re still seeing spending on restaurants, cafes, travel, beauty services: there’s still a high demand for these non-essential services.”
Murphy also points to the housing market, which appears to be shrugging off the impact of higher interest rates.
“Sydney prices are rising quite quickly again, and there was a jump in housing finance in May – which means there’s more borrowing. Even the latest building approvals were strong, although that was largely NSW apartments. So the housing market is not behaving as the Reserve Bank might like.”
Murphy explains that the rise in house prices reflects the underlying shortage of supply relative to demand and that “demand from immigrants and tenants fed up with quickly rising rents is also contributing”.
But she points out, “when you start to see approvals for building and renovations picking up again, that indicates there are people who are still in a position to spend up.”
Who’s bearing the brunt?
“Generally, what we’re finding is that the people who are suffering the most pain are in the 35 to 50 age bracket,” says NAB’s Oster. “In terms of cash flow, the people at the bottom end of the income distribution are finding it the most difficult.”
At the same time, many older, more affluent households are relatively insulated from the pain of rising rates.
“If they’ve still got their job and their debt repayments are low, or they’ve got no debt and are net savers, that group are financially better off,” says EY’s Murphy. “They’re certainly better off than those with high levels of debt who got into the housing market quite recently.”
This, she explains, is the inevitable consequence of rising interest rates. “Monetary policy is inherently unfair. It wasn’t designed as an equity tool, that’s for sure.
“It’s designed to slow the economy by hitting one particular household segment – that with mortgage debt. And the more they have, the more vulnerable they are. It also tends to be the segment that have other high costs including childcare and big supermarket bills.”
But is there a risk the Reserve Bank will push interest rates too high and push the economy into recession?
AMP’s Oliver says: “We estimate there is now a 50 per cent risk of sliding into recession, mainly driven by the consumer. It’s a high-risk situation. The Reserve Bank is very focused on wages growth, and inflation and unemployment – but they’re all lagging indicators.”
Meanwhile, he points out that more leading indicators look quite weak. “I don’t think it’s a good time to change Reserve Bank governors, when inflation is still high and the risk of recession is high.”
Still, NAB’s Oster sees some hope on the horizon for the mortgage belt.
“We expect the Reserve Bank will be cutting rates by mid next year, so people have 12 months to survive. So people have to hang in there because there’s good times coming, once we get through to the other side.
“And they have to remember that the Reserve Bank is trying to take money away from most people to slow the economy. That’s the process. They’re not trying to kill the economy.”
He adds that, in the medium term, “we’re quite optimistic. We see growth of 2.25 per cent in 2025, inflation back to the target zone, unemployment a bit below 5 per cent. That’s an extremely good outcome. And a lot of people will see Australia as a good place to live, and a good place to invest.”
However it is sliced and diced it is a great earner. Touring is the only way to make real money out of music now. Hence why so many geriatrics are out on their Zimmer frames. Bowie’s sale of his back catalogue looks more inspired every day.
I saw this on a thread of a one of the imgur things posted earlier.
They walk among us…
This is delusional. These are aspirational normal and luxury goods that the consumers have worked overtime or saved to acquire. They might have spent it elsewhere otherwise.
Looking at shrinkflation; a carton, now a bottle of pure dairy cream has gone up 30% this year.
Anyone who thinks growth and inflation are the same thing (or necessarily concomitant) should be ignored; they are incompetent and cannot understand basic definitions. There is no point in building mathematical models if the data all is conflated, let alone if you don’t understand what the grain of (big) data is.
There have been 800,000 tickets sold, some would be repeat customers, go along as guardians, friends and unlucky boyfriends…she’s also the most popular female singer on the planet right now and the first really big tour since COVID.
It’s still less than 3% of the population; it’s very impressive, but it doesn’t mean inflation, energy costs and the like are not hurting people.
“More than 4 million tried to get tickets!”
You need to be discerning when looking at web data. Four million unique hits, not four million pairs of eyeballs.
The Venn overlap between people getting wiped out by interest rate rises and Taylor Swift concert goers would be close to nil.
Ed Case
Jul 9, 2023 2:44 PM
The Robodebt system would have been great for narrowing down candidates for query and audit.
No, it was rubbish thunk up by Bill Shorten as a time bomb for the incoming Coalition Government.
More BS from someone who has yet to read the Royal Commission Report. You are a FW No. 1 with NFI. And that is being generous. T.W.A.T.
That’s nice. How are Australian mortgages financed? Over 90% is through foreign money market portfolio investment. Mortgage rates will continue to go up, they have to offer more deeply discounted corporate bonds if the US cash and commercial paper rates go up. Interest rate parity is King because mortgage formation relies on foreign-funded, Australian-issued RMBS. The US exports inflation and money supply globally. It’s a side effect of seignorage.
Can we see Australian banks offering lower rates on personal loans because of Australian monetary policy? This is too hilarious to even consider, funding 7% personal loans from 4% term deposits whilst mortgages might be 9%.
Except reinvestment rates go up when there is less tax. Sure, it disincentivises paying dividends, but it doesn’t have the NET effect of increasing the capital base more quickly.
Paying dividends is hoarding? Ask a shareholder.
“And they have to remember that the Reserve Bank is trying to take money away from most people to slow the economy. That’s the process. They’re not trying to kill the economy.”
These dickheads live in another world. Theologians have more credibility.
What bullshit ‘science’.
Sorry, let’s give no room for confusion.
Where “it” is having usurious (and an obviously absurd, WWII hangover) tax rates of 90% or the like.
No.
They are incompetent and cannot understand basic definitions.
Microeconomics is settled more or less and empirically verifiable and repeatable.
The left refuse to admit the failure of Marxism (actually mathematically impossible, see Okishio’s theorem which means Marx’s assumptions do things that rules of matrix mathematics have proven are impossible) and the welfare state (ongoing documented failure since the “Great Society”). The real controversy is in monetary policy and business cycles.
If you think growth is necessarily reliant on inflation, you are incompetent. It impliedly means that real wages would always be nominal wages and the iron law of wages is real. To say we never had real wage increases since 1980, 1900, 1800 or 1 AD is absurd.
The flip side is inflation necessarily depreciates growth. Increasing the real cost of capital machinery and consumer goods necessarily lowers the real value of consumption and investment but also the returns to capital-producing goods – which lowers in turn, long-term growth.
The anthropologist Oscar Lewis wrote years ago about a ‘culture of poverty’ that exists within the dispossessed poor of industrial nations. One of its defining features is matrifocality – being held together by the older generation of females as the men see no advantage in marriage or a settle life, also having to of become itinerant workers with no choice in that. In this, aboriginal societies are no different, and much of what passes for ‘traditional aboriginal culture is no more than an expression of this sort of poverty, where kin sharing and caring and loyalty becomes a paramount value.
Much of what I saw in fieldwork in the late 1970’s in high aboriginal population towns in Western NSW was no more than the expression of the old Australian working class culture of ‘the mob’, all in together ‘black, white or brindle’. The recipes, the rural practices, the stories and memories, the humour – none of it was specifically aboriginal. A few things were, some superstitions and occasional prohibitions, some landscape knowledge, some words in the language, but there too, some were old words or information gleaned from other poverty cultures of earlier immigrant workers.
Lewis did his main work in the Mexican slums.
…of necessity become etc
This years flu seems to be quite a bit worse that COVID 19.
Government Mongs, time to shit down everything and punish anyone who disagrees!!!
Shut FFS.
Interested in thoughts from Cat Experts
Wall Street’s Most Dangerous Derivative Secrets Are Hiding in Plain Sight in a Regulator’s Report
June 21, 2023
On March 17, 2022, the Federal Reserve began its interest rate hiking cycle, which has, thus far, evolved into 10 consecutive rate hikes, making it the fastest rate increases in 40 years. The Fed’s actions to tame inflation included four consecutive interest rate hikes of an aggressive 75 basis point hike (three quarters of one percent) on June 16, July 28, September 22, and November 3 of last year.
At that point, every trading veteran on Wall Street was scratching their head and asking themselves the same question: why aren’t we hearing about interest rate derivatives blowing up and taking down either a U.S. mega bank or its counterparty on the wrong side of the trade?
According to the quarterly derivative reports released by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the regulator of national banks, as of December 31, 2021, four mega commercial banks held $118 trillion notional (face amount) of interest rate derivatives. That $118 trillion represented an astounding 91percent of all interest rate derivatives held by all commercial banks in the United States.
Those four banks and their interest rate derivatives as of December 31, 2021 are as follows: JPMorgan Chase Bank, $45.47 trillion in interest rate derivatives; Goldman Sachs Bank USA with $34.24 trillion; Citigroup’s Citibank N.A. with $25.88 trillion; and Bank of America N.A. with $12.58 trillion.
But here is where things really get interesting. (See Table 20 on page 25 of the OCC report.) As of December 31, 2021 – prior to the March 17, 2022 launch of the fastest Fed rate hikes in 40 years, those same four banks were holding a combined $18 trillion notional in interest rate derivative contracts which had a maturity of more than five years. Exactly how does one get out of these contracts, or find a counterparty to hedge them with, once the Fed starts tightening and shows no signs of stopping? Did all four banks have a magical crystal ball and make bets in those 5+year contracts that interest rates would be skyrocketing?
Of the four banks named above, Goldman Sachs Bank USA had the largest exposure to interest rate derivative contracts with a maturity of more than five years. Its exposure was $6.7 trillion notional.
Goldman Sachs Bank USA now seems to be in a desperate bid to raise cash, using the Apple brand to seduce customers into a savings account paying a high rate of interest. (See our report: Apple Is Loaning Its Brand to the Great Vampire Squid to Offer FDIC-Insured Savings Accounts.)
Adding to our curiosity as to how everybody landed on the correct side of the interest rate derivative trades during the fastest rate hikes in 40 years, is a chart in the most recent OCC derivatives report for the first quarter of this year. It shows how much commercial banks have charged off quarterly for derivative losses since 2000. Following the financial crisis of 2008, the charge-offs spiked to as high as $1.6 billion in 2011 but have been absolutely tame in the past two years. How is this possible? (See chart below from the OCC’s current report.)
Earlier this week, we emailed the very nice and responsive folks in the press office of the OCC with two questions on the current OCC report on derivatives for the quarter ending March 31, 2023. The first question inquired about the following:
“Regarding Table 16 in the current report, where does the OCC get the data for the column titled ‘Bilaterally netted current credit exposure’? That is, does the OCC calculate it or does the OCC rely on the respective bank to calculate it and provide it to the OCC?”
An OCC spokesperson responded as follows:
“Bilaterally netted current credit exposures shown in Table 16 are calculated and reported by each respective bank. This information is reported on Call Report Schedule RC-R Part II, Risk-Weighted Assets, Memorandum Item #1 ‘Current credit exposure across all derivative contracts covered by the regulatory capital rules.’ ”
In other words, banks that have rigged everything from foreign exchange to Libor interest rates, to precious metals, to U.S. treasury securities have the full confidence of the OCC to accurately report their derivative exposures.
Bilateral netting is defined by the OCC as follows:
“A legally enforceable arrangement between a bank and a counterparty that creates a single legal obligation covering all included individual contracts. This arrangement means that a bank’s receivables or payables, in the event of the default or insolvency of one of the parties, would be the net sum of all positive and negative fair values of contracts included in the bilateral netting arrangement.”
According to Table 16 in the current OCC report, through the use of bilateral netting, those four mega banks mentioned above have reduced their total derivative contracts (interest rate, credit, equities, precious metals, foreign exchange, etc.) for the purpose of calculating total credit exposure to capital, as follows: JPMorgan Chase Bank’s total derivatives went from $59.8 trillion to $317.4 billion. Goldman Sachs Bank USA’s total derivatives went from $56.5 trillion to $76.34 billion – making JPMorgan Chase look like an amateur at bilateral netting. Citibank’s total derivatives went from $55 trillion to $181 billion; and Bank of America’s total derivatives dived from $22 trillion to a very tame $100 billion. (See chart below derived from Table 16 data on page 20 of the current OCC report.)
Our second question to the OCC was this:
“How does the OCC explain the fact that despite the fastest Fed rate increases in 40 years, the public has heard no reports about massive losses on interest rate derivatives — despite the fact that this is a highly concentrated market? To express it another way, how could everybody have been on the correct side of these trades?”
The OCC spokesperson responded as follows:
“Banks are required to have sound risk management and control practices for managing and monitoring interest rate risk and trading activities. The vast majority of OCC supervised banks’ derivative activities are for the purpose of hedging exposures. Thus, most interest rate derivative positions entered into by banks are to neutralize interest rate risk exposure resulting from on balance sheet and customer-driven positions.”
The ability of the mega banks on Wall Street to have “sound risk management and control practices” would have far more credibility were it not for the fact that century old mega banks on Wall Street either blew up in 2008 or were on the verge of blowing up when the Fed decided to secretly inject them with cumulative loans totaling $16.1 trillion over two and a half years, according to an audit conducted by the Government Accountability Office. (See chart below from that audit.)
Then there is also the pesky detail that the largest holder of derivatives in the United States is JPMorgan Chase, the bank that used depositors’ money to gamble in derivatives in London in 2012 and lose $6.2 billion of depositors’ money. The recklessness of this action on the part of the largest bank in the United States was so egregious that the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations conducted an intense investigation into the matter and released a damning 300-page report in 2013.
The late Senator Carl Levin, chair of the Subcommittee at the time, told the American people that JPMorgan Chase “piled on risk, hid losses, disregarded risk limits, manipulated risk models, dodged oversight, and misinformed the public.”
I think marxism has failed in everyway possible unless marx’s real desire was death and poverty.
If twitter links are working again, watch this one. One of the best sports interviews ever.
https://twitter.com/accnetwork/status/1667656393229303808
rickw,
shit down also works. 😀
Just returned from visiting stepfather in hospital with my mother. You know, nurses are wonderful people. They have the patience of Job. It’s interesting to see how almost nursing staff in our hospitals are now from the subcontinent or parts of Asia, particularly the Philippines. They are kind and patient.
My stepdad, despite being a private patient, is in a ward of four men. Visiting him today, with my mother somewhat dazed and my stepfather incoherent, mumbling about how he’s at the CYC and what drinks do we want. Now whilst this is amusing, it’s also upsetting. When we go to leave, you can see the fear in his eyes, and he says “where are you going, I’m coming too”. Of course, this makes my mother very upset.
Just before leaving, I’m sitting, listening and watching the nurses, they’re marvellous, how they put up with kvetchy old men. Two nurses attend the man opposite my stepdad, they’re wearing gloves, and so they close the curtains because they’re obviously undertaking a procedure on him, what I didn’t know, but then then I hear the old man say..
“Thanks for cleaning my bum nurse”.
To which the nurse replied, “that’s okay, it’s a nice bum”.
Derivatives decrease risk. Try selling grain without a futures market (purely on forward contracts) or running an exporter without FX risk management (buying and selling options).
What derivatives though? Warrants?
It depends if they wrote the calls and puts or just bought them on the open market. I reckon there is double counting and the notional risk can simply not be exercised most of the time. If you have a risk management that encompasses a range of scenarios, most of your call options for example may never be exercised. You just lose the purchase price plus forgo some interest earnt or paid back to hold. These “losses” have already been paid for and the “notional risk” simply never materialises.
Another thing is these contracts get rolled over on a cycle or can be extendable and rewritable. Another thing is they can be short-term and issued to other risk managers and arbitrageurs. Selling puts for example to options traders is done so on a risk-adjusted basis. The trades are profitable because short-term arbitrage exists and they are levered highly. To hold such positions, they have a cost of carrying more than the options they profit from to hedge their risk. The option trader might go for a simple long on a share and buy a put to short the risk. Their portfolios won’t be balanced like this normally for a “delta punt” but would assume that the shares and options are somehow mispriced. Most of the options are never exercised or resold back into the market until they expire.
If you really want to have a look at a possible banking crisis, see George Gamon and the Federal Home Loan Bank system – a second kind of Federal Reserve System – “second to last resort”.
WARNING: 2nd Wave Of Banking Crisis Coming!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Rz6UfU3dQc
Comparing 16 trillion to 6 billion is why this is a mess of confused nonsense. That is > 4% of 1% of the supposed notional risk that is entailed in this reportage.
Where “it” is having usurious (and an obviously absurd, WWII hangover) tax rates of 90% or the like.
Huh?
Tax Rates can’t be “usurious”.
As explained, the idea behing 90% Tax Company Rates was to encourage reinvestment in the business.
Says the tax-free superannuated former public servant.
No no.
As bullshitted in an evidence-free stupor.
Or just its natural state. It’s amazing how completely brainless are the elites and greens. This would have been ample fodder for great jokes only a decade or so ago yet no comedians would now touch it.
In my opinion we are moving into an inflationary phase because the enemies of the people in canbra are making energy, housing, water and food more expensive by deliberate action on their part. Their response- bash borrowers.
Not untrue milton, but if you watch George Gammon you will understand why there is now endless QE, M2 won’t always show it and during COVID money was printed at irresponsible rates with irresponsible MP. Were houses really 30-40% more valuable in Dec 2021 than they were in Dec 2019?
(If yes – and you think this is sustainable price growth???)
Lowe (“internet rates won’t go up”) needs to be sacked. The risk is an even worse ALP hack that believes in MMT gets the job.
I watched an old Ms Marple movie last night and heard this lovely song, My Foolish Heart — at first I thought the voice was Mel Torme – the Velvet Fog – but no, it is Billy Eckstine – beautiful — Frank Sinatra did an uptempo version which just didn’t gel. The beginning few bars remind me very much of The Best Things in Life are Free which Mel Torme sang. – ah nostalgia such.a pleasant interlude away from the madness.
It’s already quite clear who owns everything and it’s not the general population or even the monarch.
Thanks Dot for your thoughts on Derivates
Lowe is a primary example of the eloi which mis manage this country.
If Lowe had any decency he would quit after telling people to borrow borrow borrow and then raising rates.
Yes, and the key number someone posted upthread was that merch outweighs ticket proceeds by a factor of 3 or 4 to 1.
That is yuuuge, considering the price of tickets.
They are going to sell heaps of merch to people who didn’t even see a concert.
That is what all the slow drip of tickets was all about. Creating hype. They could have sold out in an hour or two, but the whole days “news” was about people waiting online for tickets.
I imagine they get CommSuper at the RBA.
DeSantis is sinking.
Ms Walton, who is the wife of TV personality Rove McManus, believes she has Indigenous ancestry after taking a DNA test.
She is among several people linked to the Frankston-based Bunurong Land Council who will give evidence in the Federal Court next week over a claim by another Aboriginal group.
So it seems 2 groups are trying to claim the same land.
Why not provide them with nulla nullas, and let them determine ownership in a culturally traditional way?
Cassie,
One lady who wrote of her mothers dementia / confusion learned it was better to never say goodbye, rather, just say we are popping down to get some milk for our cuppa, be back soon. Or getting a book form the library be back soon, or the newspaper, or anything, but goodbye.
It may be worth a try. Hugs to you.
“It may be worth a try. Hugs to you.”
Noted. Thank you. I saw the fear in his angelic eyes.
It was quite upsetting.
Why doesn’t De Santis just stick to Florida where he seems to be doing a pretty good job. If the Republicans re take the WH that would be great but I’ll believe it when I see it.
Finalists for interwebs winner for the weekend.
Rabz:
Yes. You are an irredeemable imbecile.
Which of course, none of us here were aware of.
Except when we were. Which was all the time.
Or Carpe Jugulum:
No i don’t why the had?
Maybe ballsack you sniff
Tard you is maybe
Butthole you penis
Vote now!
Dot thanks for the info re Okishio’s theorem. Can’t really get my brain into gear for matrices on a Sunday arvo- but will look more closely at a later stage. It’s all impedance matching and j operators for me atm.
Stalker, I will not allow this post to pass unchallenged.
JC
Jul 8, 2023 7:57 PM
JMH
Jul 8, 2023 6:37 PM
JMH
Oh look there. My stalker has returned. PMSL.
Oh yeah, stalker. Coming from the nasty worm who even doxxes people’s spouses. We know it was you, you pathetic little zero.
Works both ways.
In any event, Liz never accused you of stalking, or did she?
……………………………………………….
The only damage inflicted by authoring such a disgraceful lie is upon the author himself. (Highlighted text.) It’s a slanderous accusation and the baboon should be made to apologise. Of course, we know that won’t happen.
Here are his words thrown back at him: (See JC at 11.17 pm 8th July.)
“Trans (remove “Trans” and insert JC) thinks he can put one over people here by making abuse laden assertions without a shred of evidence to back up anything he says.”
Oh – and while I’m at it, I’ll republish a list of some of the stalker’s targets over the years.
ZULU
EYRIE
MATRIX TRANSFORM
TIMOTHY NEILSON
SALVATORE
WINSTON
BRUCE OF NEWK
ARKY
MATER
BOURNE1879
And, of course, me.
Why not provide them with nulla nullas, and let them determine ownership in a culturally traditional way?
That thought has crossed the mind lol
Eyes really are the windows of the soul Cassie.
Eyes really are the windows of the soul Cassie
And if you happen to look at the eyes of any of the voice proponents miltonf, all you see is hatred. Always furrowed brow, no bounce.
No doubt “Cherelle” got tickets herself.
Marxist hatred BB. Not much caring and sharing in their world view.
EY Oceania- oh the fancy new name for Ernst and Young. Oh Lord.
Thought it was a cruise operator at first. Probably more useful if it were.
Newpseakful update July Nine
EY Oceania has always been at war with PwC
One senses that PwC might be up for “rebranding” soon too.
*Newspeakful
Doubleplusungood spud fingers, ruining my totes canny gag
All right, you accountants…it’s acronyms at ten paces!
Doubleplusgood joke Wally Dali
Use a traditional cricket bat in the locally traditional way; to ‘encourage the others’.
Would they refer to the North Sea by its customary tribal name, Njord?
Chris
Jul 9, 2023 5:39 PM
a respected local knowledge holder shut down proceedings on the basis of ground disturbance and the new Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act and the ‘significance’ of the site to the family,” he wrote.
Use a traditional cricket bat in the locally traditional way; to ‘encourage the others’.
………………………………….
What I would like to see with regard to this appalling Cultural Heritage rot is civil disobedience from every WA resident having to suffer the rubbish.
When Taylor Swift tickets sell out in a day – and those are expensive tickets – that’s not the sign of an economy on its knees.
Doesn’t sound like rigorous analysis to me.
So much for the common good.
Maybe a Master’s at the ANU teaches you to think that way.
What’s next..the lipstick index makes a come back as a vital economic indicator?
Cats, I just love this song – especially the following lines:
Goil – I only wanna be down with you
Cause you got somethang that I just got to get with
I’ll pick you up late at night after work
I said laydee, step inside my Hyundai
Gonna take you up to Glendale
Gonna take you for a real good meal*
Cause when our eyes did meet
Goil, you knew I was packing heat … 🙂
*Should make Z2KA happy, given his disapproval of slimbos
Hemlines, Rog.
She’s actually re-recorded her music too and has sole IP over it, so she’s one of the smarter performers. She seems to work harder and gets paid better.
I hope she meets a man and marries him and has some kids – but then she’d run out of material.
Back in the 1980s and early 1990s , Metallica made quite a lot of their money from touring, IIRC. Relatively expensive tickets for the time, they were (as I have seen on tape…too young) good live performers. Then Lars wanted a gold plated shark tank.
There’s a theory that more voluptuous women were popular among gentlemen’s magazines during tough economic times, in the good times, the waifs ruled.
I am always leery of the protruding goggly eyes, I know it could simply be thyroid but usually they belong to stunned mullets.
There’s an hypothesis that cinched waists are history, Pol.
Oh – and while I’m at it, I’ll republish a list of some of the stalker’s targets over the years.
ZULU
EYRIE
MATRIX TRANSFORM
TIMOTHY NEILSON
SALVATORE
WINSTON
BRUCE OF NEWK
ARKY
MATER
BOURNE1879
And, of course, me.
Sounds like a Conga Line of Arseholes to me.
Over the target.
YouTube Censors Australian Politician’s Maiden Speech To Parliament (9 Jul)
I wonder how long before any pollie to the right of Karl Marx will be censored by YouTube?
That’s why we all head here, Cats – for much “rigorous analysis” of the matters du jour, especially those of an economic nature.
Turd Case
Who better than a skin suit full of sh1t to make such a judgement?
Lower…please!
Altogether too much dimpled flesh on display atm.
This simply illustrates human nature, particularly the less socialised one. Give people power and they will use it, they want to see how far they can go.
Another hero. Wasted years of his life trying to reform the NSW gliberal pardee before finally marching out in disgust. Takeaway quote:
“The NSW gliberal pardee doesn’t give a rodent’s about John Ruddick’s plan for reforming it”
Ed loves this song.
“And, of course, me.”
I have memories of you joining in on various nasty pile ons of Lizzie.
Nobody here is without some sin, least of all you.
Available on ADH TV
John Ruddick MLC – Inaugural Speech – NSW Parliament
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw1zPTDEVxA
Cassie of Sydney
Jul 9, 2023 6:15 PM
“And, of course, me.”
I have memories of you joining in on various nasty pile ons of Lizzie.
Nobody here is without some sin, least of all you.
……………………………………….
A look in the mirror may do you some good, Cassie!
All I did was expose bullshit. Live with it!
Well, I see it was back pretty darn quick, and I watched it on youtube.
It was… a typical light hearted maiden speech.
The ‘truth bombs’ were tabled, not detonated.
“A look in the mirror may do you some good, Cassie!
All I did was expose bullshit. Live with it!”
LOL, you don’t like being called out for your rank hypocrisy, do you? Maybe you should……..live with it!
Goggliest of gogglys.
Cassie of Sydney
Jul 9, 2023 6:35 PM
“A look in the mirror may do you some good, Cassie!
All I did was expose bullshit. Live with it!”
LOL, you don’t like being called out for your rank hypocrisy, do you? Maybe you should……..live with it!
……………………………..
What a childish response. I’m no hypocrite, but it seems, you certainly are.
Anyway … what’s your expert take on the security situation in Israel, Bruce?
Don’t worry, it’s coming. FWIW, Tony Maddox – back in Court tomorrow over the incident of the culvert and the Wagyl – is blown away at the popular support he’s receiving.
Teh Paywallian reporting internal Treasury document casts doubt on Teh Ponds Institute analysis of inflationary pressures. In other news, water is wet.
Which is what makes this place interesting and worth coming back to. As opposed to others e.g. guardian.com where dissenting or just different ideas are banned – even after a single comment is posted.
Interesting that the woman with the historical links to a claim over Port Philip was herself probably only one quarter Aboriginal and her husband and father of her nine children was half Tasmanian Aboriginal half Anglo.
I can’t see a native title claim for either side being successful, if the Yorta Yorta decision is any guide.
biography of Louisa Briggs