Michael Pascoe
Michael Pascoe comments on companies, markets and the economy.
Michael Pascoe
The silliest bit of the budget nonsense
Michael Pascoe Pet projects and bizarre accidents aside, some budget decisions are just stupid.
Michael Pascoe
Forget simplistic spurning, it's a deficit we should embrace
Michael Pascoe You can be forgiven for missing the best news in the federal budget.
Budget
You missed the best news in the budget
Michael Pascoe You can be forgiven for missing the best news in the federal budget. The vast majority of the media have and Wayne Swan - a man who would have trouble selling free beer - apparently isn't capable of...
Michael Pascoe
Beware the Aussie dollar bear
Michael Pascoe At around parity, the Aussie is still strong. A couple of cents either way matters much more to foreign exchange traders than to the rest of us.
Michael Pascoe
Ignore the noise - the jobs market is sound
Michael Pascoe No, the jobs market probably isn't as strong as the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics figures indicate, but it's still considerably better than the commentariat suggests.
Sharemarket dividends or bank savings? There's no contest
Michael Pascoe So you're a self-funded retiree cursing the Reserve Bank for cutting interest rates. Don't.
Michael Pascoe
Penny drops: savings are a dud
Michael Pascoe So you’re a self-funded retiree cursing the Reserve Bank for cutting interest rates. Don’t. If the RBA has forced you to realise your term deposits are duds, the mandarins have done you a favour.
Michael Pascoe
RBA a surprise but not a shock
Michael Pascoe The government can claim that its policies are “allowing” the RBA to trim rates, when it’s more like they are forcing the RBA’s hand.
Michael Pascoe
Stables of insider knowledge
Michael Pascoe If economic forecasters exist to make weather forecasters look good, the horse racing industry exists to make the stock market look honest.
Michael Pascoe
Busting the bank and consumer spending myths
Michael Pascoe Combine record bank profits with a looming Reserve Bank board meeting and you’re bound to get a Greek chorus pushing myths and self interest.
Busting bank bashing
Michael Pascoe Michael Pascoe sets about busting some of the persistent myths that swirl around banks.
Michael Pascoe
The Checkout is a bitter pill for some
Michael Pascoe The Swisse vitamins empire is suing ABC's The Checkout for defamation. But rather than legal advice, what the pill company needed was better media management advice.
Michael Pascoe
Staying ahead of inflation
Michael Pascoe Despite the harping about cost of living pressures, most incomes are rising faster than inflation - also for pensioners.
The dumbest ads on TV: Volvo and the federal government
Michael Pascoe With the Prime Minister promising that “Labor values” will be applied to budget cutbacks, the government pays to tell us the nation's richest people can enjoy a 50 per cent rebate on childcare costs.
Michael Pascoe
The tax revenue hole will grow
Michael Pascoe There's a nasty lesson waiting for the Coalition in the ABS' taxation summary: the $12 billion hole in revenue expectations is getting bigger.
The Business Week ahead
Michael Pascoe Michael Pascoe discusses yet more jockeying and positioning ahead of the federal budget.
Michael Pascoe
Debt: It's not how big it is, it's what you do with it
Michael Pascoe Wayne Swan's federal budget is a more dangerous beast than usual thanks to the election four months later.
China joins iron ore bears
Michael Pascoe If the latest iron ore bears are right, there are ramifications for the federal budget, as well as the viability of some smaller miners.
Michael Pascoe
Inflation lower than it looks
Michael Pascoe Not only is the latest inflation count lower than the tipsters were forecasting, it’s lower than it looks. Statistics can be like that.
Michael Pascoe
Yes, China slowing really is a good thing
Michael Pascoe The considerable industry devoted to knocking the China story and predicting Beijing’s failure has been hard at it for decades - without success.
