I have an olive tree in my front garden. It was a housewarming gift 17 years ago from my then boss. Most years, I get some olives. Last year, they were very puny in size. This year, I just had a look at the ripening fruit and as you can see from the photo, there …
Author Archives: Ernest Zanatta
Wikipedia’s Fake News about the Pandemic?
I have two sources I read regularly about the pandemic. One is the news.com.au website and the other is the wikipedia page on the corona virus pandemic. I have noticed an interesting discrepancy. As of a minute or so ago, the News site says that there are 189,633 cases in the USA, and 4,864 cases …
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April Fools’ Day has been cancelled
It occurred to me around 4pm, when I was writing my duty manager’s report for the day (I am mostly working from home, but being in the office on Wednesdays and Thursdays to cover any spot fires which might come up), that it was April 1st, and that I had not seen any April fools …
The Problem with Financial Journalists
I knew a chap at uni who later went on to become a financial journalist. We did not exactly get along well. Probably at least partly, if not mostly, my fault. But not entirely. When he got his own byline in the business pages of one or other of the Fairfax papers, I remember reading …
Entering Lockdown, well, sort of….
Much as I prefer to believe that the coronavirus pandemic is not cause for concern, things are getting weirder and weirder. Whilst we are not now in lockdown per se, we are not meant to leave our homes except to go to work/study, the doctor, the supermarket, or exercise. Work has made this a bit …
First World Problems
It’s a bit amusing to read that people are not happy about bring quarantined in five star hotels. Free of charge. It might be a lot boring, but it’s better than where I usually stay when travelling. I do hope they have plenty of books to read – I always carry a stash of books …
On The Beach?
It was through Nevil Shute borrowing the name for his 1950s post-apocalyptic novel On The Beach (which was almost immediately filmed with Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner and Fred Astaire) from a passage in the poem The Hollow Men that I first discovered T.S. Eliot when I was 15: In this last of meeting places We …
The $7500 question….
On the weekend, I did some sums. I added up all of the Federal Government’s current and promised commitments to keep the economy going and to relieve the suffering of the un and under employed during the current crisis, and then divided it by the population of Australia. It comes to about $7500 which is …
Spock and Kirk – why Economic Man is not rational
I have always considered myself, ever since I replaced my innate conservatism with more well reasoned libertarian views, a supporter of economic rationalism. I still do, for the most part, as it is both the most morally appropriate and effective model for economic thinking. But, as I get older, I see it simply as a …
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Looking to ‘Leeward’ – a eulogy for share traders
At one point today, the losses which I avoided by bailing out of the share market 20 days ago were up to $90,000. Right now, they only stand at $85,000. In other words, the one decision to get out of the share market has saved me more losses than I have made from a series …
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Lost For Words! 