Lazy


Apologies for the lack of anything substantial this week, unfortunately I do have employment and other things going on. Needless to say little has changed in Tasmania - except for it getting worse. Burnie listings have exploded, so much so, I feel like a bear handler from a former Soviet state when talking about it - I could be up on cruelty charges, it's almost poking a caged animal with a stick at this stage.

Devonport continues to rise and Launceston looks like it's about to blow after adding another fifty plus listings before the week is out.

After reading Jeremy Grantham's latest "Night of the Living Fed" newsletter at work today, I had hoped to present it as some super new news, but David Llewellyn-Smith squeezed me out on that front. I will say, in a moment of Chris Joye pomposity, I'm taking credit for Grantham's follow up, given the fact I made sure GMO was fully aware of the the howling from Australian vested interests to his bubble claims.

Take that with a grain of salt, but I also recently asked GMO to ask behavioural investing expert, James Montier, author of 2005's "Pictures of a Mania? - US Housing Special", to turn his attention to Australia. If he puts out an article, maybe I'm not as pompously ridiculous as I'm currently appearing.

Given that Westpac came out with it's own bubble denials today, along with a goon from BS Shrapnel. I'll draw attention to Montier's criticism of Westpac's self interest back in July:

One of my colleagues sent around a bloomberg article which stated that Westpac (the Aussie bank) had opined that the Basel 3 rules were flawed and risked constraining lenders! Wasn't it unconstraining lending that help get us into the GFC (global financial crisis for non-aussies)?

Why anyone would care what any bank thought of attempts to regulate it remains beyond me. One of the major problems of Basel 2 was that banks were allowed to use their own risk models to value assets. This is akin to asking kids to mark their own homework, one shouldn't be surprised when they report they got 100% correct.

Talk about not learning from mistakes. Hasn't anyone heard of regulatory capture?

Coincidently, guess which bank spent the most time running the rule over this site today?

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